Over Rs 29k cr indirect tax evasion during April-Oct

New Delhi: The investigation arm of the Finance Ministry has detected tax evasion worth Rs 29,088 crore in 1,835 cases during the April-October period of the current financial year, a senior official said Wednesday.

Of this, the Directorate General of GST Intelligence (DGGI), which is the enforcement agency for checking indirect tax evasion, has detected evasion of goods and services tax (GST) worth Rs 4,562 crore in 571 cases.

However, the bulk of the evasion was detected in case of service tax. The total number of instances where service tax was evaded stood at 1,145 involving Rs 22,973 crore.

In the case of central excise duty, the DGGI detected 119 cases where tax evaded was worth Rs 1,553 crore.

"DGGI officers have detected total indirect tax evasion of Rs 29,088 crore during April-October," the official said.

He further said that the total amount of detection was likely to be more as the data does not include the detection by field offices of the Central Board of Indirect Taxes and Customs (CBIC).

On recovery of evaded taxes, the official said that a total amount of Rs 5,427 crore was realised during the seven-month period till October.

These, he added, includes recovery from previous cases and those detected during the current financial year.

Of the total recovery, Rs 3,124 crore was from GST evaders, followed by Rs 2,174 crore in case of service tax, and Rs 128 crore from those who had evaded central excise.

The more significant chunk of recovery during April-October in GST, the official said, can be attributed to the decision of the CBIC to tighten on evaders.

Intending to focus on checking evasion, the apex indirect tax body had in September set up the Office of Commissioner GST (Investigation), headed by Neeraj Prasad.

Last month, the Finance Ministry had extended the informant reward scheme of central excise and service tax to GST.