Excelsior Correspondent
JAMMU, Mar 1: Jammu Regional Unit of Directorate General of GST Intelligence (DGGI), the intelligence arm of Central Board of Indirect Taxes & Customs, Ministry of Finance has unearthed more than Rs 4 crore GST evasion by Government work contractors in the UT of J&K.
The office of Jammu Regional Unit of DGGI headed by Dr. Iftakhar Ahmed Chowdhary (IRS) Deputy Director, by using data analysis tools has scrutinised GST returns filing history of about 250 contractors who have received payments against completion of works allotted to them by two Govt department offices in J&K only.
During the scrutiny of data, more than 100 contractors were found violating laws and rules in respect of GST Act and have evaded more than Rs 4 crore GST.
It is pertinent to mention here that work contractors are covered under category service providers in GST Act and the payments released against completion of work contracts like roads, bridges etc. includes GST applicable on the service provided (allocated works completed and payments released from Govt.) by them. The DGGI found that many of these contractors after receipt of payments from Government are either not depositing remaining tax (from October 2018, 2% of GST mandatorily being deducted by Department) at all or paying lesser tax than their actual liability.
As the Government spends major chunk of its development funds on infrastructure projects and up to 12% of this expenditure is actually the indirect tax (GST) which is expected to be deposited by service provider (work contractors) to Centre and State Governments. It is expected that some of these contractors by evading their tax liability are causing huge amount of revenue loss to both Central and State Governments.
DGGI has booked many of the contractors found violating the GST Act and had started investigations against them. The remaining violators are expected to be covered subsequently.
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