Now Govt-owned GSTN to rope in private entities for analytics
7 May 2018 5:43 PM GMT
New Delhi: GST Network has invited bids from private entities for "360-degree" profiling of taxpayers for early detection of fraud as it seeks to transform into an end-to-end platform for checking GST evasion, from being just a tax collection portal.
The analytics company to be roped in will have the mandate for designing and developing a Fraud Analytics System.
GST Network has however barred Infosys from bidding for the project to avoid conflict of interest.
The system will take about an year to be operational and leverage existing data pertaining to GST registration, return filing and e-way bill, along with the information from other external sources such as Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU), Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT), banks and state tax departments.
According to the eligibility criteria, the interested bidder will need to have a turnover of Rs 300 crore and should have posted profit in the past three financial years. Also, it should have experience in implementing Advanced Analytics, the GSTN said in the Request For Proposal (RFP).
The fraud analytics company would be tasked with establishment of taxpayer's identity. "Based on information available within GSTN as well as third party information, it is expected to reliably establish the identity/360 degree view of the taxpayer and key members of its management," said the RFP.
It would also establish taxpayer's risk profile by analysing information on purchasers and sellers as part of returns data, whether the taxpayer deals with sensitive or evasion prone commodities, history of the owner of the company as well as rapid change of promoters, among others.
The company, to be appointed for 6 years, would also be required to suggest ways to prevent revenue leakages and forecast revenue growth and other econometric analysis for policy formation.
It can also suggest changes in laws, rules/ procedures based on fraud detection to plug loopholes and identify material/evidences which may be shared with tax authorities for prosecution of fraudulent taxpayers.
To ensure that there is no conflict of interest, the GSTN has barred Infosys from bidding for the fraud analytics project.
Infosys had in 2015 won the Rs 1,380-crore deal for developing and running GSTN's backend software and hardware. GSTN has in the bid document mandated that the bidder should develop adequate capability for data storage and calculating complexity of data.
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