The Ministry of Finance have cancelled over 1.63 lakh registrations during the month of October and November for not filing GST returns for the last six months. The assessees were allegedly running fake firms.
Nationwide Drive
The Directorate General of GST Intelligence (DGGI) and CGST Commissionerate’s have conducted a nationwide drive in the month of November against GST fake invoice frauds, & have arrested 132 persons including four chartered accountants and a woman for availing themselves of or passing on ineligible ITC fraudulently and have booked 1,430 cases against more than 4,586 fake GSTIN entities identified across the country.
Sources from Tax Department said one chartered accountant Akshay Jain, was arrested from Visakhapatnam for issuing fake ITC to the tune of ₹20.97 crores on the invoices of cement companies by creating 14 fake firms without a supply of goods. The investigations is still going on.
All the GSTIN entities who had not filed their GSTR-3B returns for more than six months were first issued cancellation notices and then their registrations were cancelled as per SOP. Also, out of 720 deemed registrations granted between August 21, 2020 to November 16, 2020 where Aadhaar authentication was not done, 55 deemed registrations have been identified for the discrepancy and the process of cancellation was initiated in these cases.
Not Filing Returns
The Sources said that further 28,635 taxpayers who have not filed their GSTR-3B returns for more than 6 months as of December 1, 2020 were identified and all the GST Commissionerate’s have been directed to initiate suo-moto cancellation process in these cases.
In Ahmedabad zone, a total of 11,048 GST registrations were cancelled and in the Chennai zone, 19,586 suo-moto cancellations have been done so far in respect of GST taxpayers who have failed to file returns for more than six months.