New Delhi: Government tax officials have uncovered approximately Rs 7.08 lakh crore worth of GST tax evasion over the past five years through fiscal 2024-25, with fraudulent input tax credit claims accounting for around Rs 1.79 lakh crore of this amount, according to information presented to Parliament on Monday.
The most recent fiscal year (2024-25) saw particularly high detection rates, with Central GST field officers identifying over Rs 2.23 lakh crore in tax evasion cases. Finance Minister of State Pankaj Chaudhary shared these figures in the Lok Sabha.
The data revealed that in FY25, authorities discovered 30,056 instances of GST evasion. More than half of these cases - specifically 15,283 - involved fraudulent input tax credit schemes, which together represented Rs 58,772 crore in evaded taxes.
In the 2023-24 fiscal, Rs 2.30 lakh crore worth GST evasion was detected by CGST field officers, involving ITC fraud of Rs 36,374 crore. In FY23, about Rs 1.32 lakh crore GST evasion was detected, including Rs 24,140 crore of fake ITC claims.
In FY22 and FY21, GST evasion stood at Rs 73,238 crore and Rs 49,384 crore respectively. This included ITC fraud of Rs 28,022 crore and Rs 31,233 crore respectively.
In the last five years (2020-21 to 2024-25), total GST evasion detected by CGST field officers stood at about Rs 7.08 lakh crore in 91,370 cases. Taxes recovered during the period by way of voluntary deposit stood at over Rs 1.29 lakh crore.
The evasion data includes ITC fraud of about Rs 1.79 lakh crore in 44,938 cases between FY21 to FY25. Chaudhary said the central government and GSTN are taking various steps to prevent tax evasion, such as digitisation through E-invoicing, GST analytics, highlighting of outliers based on system-flagged mismatches, providing actionable intelligence and selection of returns for scrutiny and selection of taxpayers for audit based on various risk parameters.
“These measures are helpful in safeguarding the revenue and nabbing the evaders,” Chaudhary said in a written reply in the Lower House.
To a question on the actual net Central GST collection compared to the Revised Estimates (RE), Chaudhary said net CGST collection was 96.7 per cent of the RE in 2024-25 fiscal.
Net CGST includes CGST + Integrated GST + compensation cess.
Actual collection stood at over Rs 10.26 lakh crore in FY25, as against RE of nearly Rs 10.62 lakh crore.
In FY24, net CGST collection was over Rs 9.57 lakh crore, or 100.1 per cent of the RE of over Rs 9.56 lakh crore.