‘Punjab losing Rs 20,000 crore to GST evasion each year’

Ludhiana, July 26

At a time when Punjab is passing through the toughest financial crisis, the SGST Department has completely failed to check the evasion of revenue. Due to such evaders, the state is losing huge revenue of more than Rs 20,000 crore a year. The Federation of Punjab Small Industries Association (FOPSIA) claims to have compiled a report to support and prove the volume of tax evasions in the state.

As per the data presented by the Finance Minister in the Parliament on a question by Member Parliament Sushil Modi, Punjab has shown no keen interest in checking the evasions. The figures presented to the Ministry of Finance were ‘fake and unauthenticated’ as it is not possible to recover Rs 200 crore against the GST evasion of 296 crore during 2019-20, claims FOPSIA.

The total GST evasion detected in Punjab was Rs 4169.82 crore till November 2023 and the recovered amount was just Rs 1,177.13 crore with 61 arrests made. This data clearly shows that the SGST department of Punjab is least serious about the tax evasion in the state. The other nearby states have recovered between Rs 7,000 crore and Rs 9,000 crore, whereas Punjab is far behind in recoveries. —Badish Jindal, President of FOPSIA

President of FOPSIA Badish Jindal on behalf of the association has written a letter to the Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann that the mismatched data showed the alleged connivance between corrupt officers and the bogus billing companies. Due to this, Punjab only detected 1 per cent of national evasion, he said.

The total GST evasion detected in Punjab was Rs 4169.82 crore till November 2023 and the recovered amount was just Rs 1,177.13 crore with 61 arrests made. “This data clearly shows that the SGST department of Punjab is least serious about the tax evasion in the state. The other nearby states have recovered between Rs 7,000 crore and Rs 9,000 crore, whereas Punjab is far behind in recoveries. There is dire need to investigate the connivance of bogus billing companies and few corrupt officials, shielding the black-sheep,” Jindal further said.

Due to these tax evasions, Punjab is the soft target of exporters of India. They purchase invoices from Punjab to get the input tax credits. Even the exporters of Punjab show higher selling value as the input tax credit invoices are easily available in the state.

The departments continue to crack a whip against bogus billing, but still the menace continues.

“Bill swapping is even a bigger fraud than bogus billing in the state. There are thousands of stores in Punjab that are involved in such activities. They are selling the material in retail but issuing the invoices to the exporters and other companies for taking full input tax credit from the government,” said FOPSIA president in the letter written to the CM, adding that recoveries in Punjab were not up to the mark as compared to the other states.