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The Central Board of Indirect Taxes and Customs (CBIC) member Shashank Priya said Goods and Services tax (GST) authorities have so far cancelled over 4,900 GST registrations and detected tax evasion of over Rs 15,000 crore during the ongoing two-month drive to weed out fake GST Identification Numbers (GSTINs) which will end on July 15, 2023. He also said the large number of fake registrations unearthed during the drive underlines the need for policy changes to tighten GST registration and return filing process.  

CBIC member further said over 69,600 GSTINs have been selected for physical verification, of which 59,178 have been verified by field officers during the ongoing pan-India special drive. 16,989 GSTINs are found to be non-existent. 11,015 GSTINs have been suspended and 4,972 have been cancelled. He further said tax evasion of Rs 15,035 crore has been detected and Rs 1,506 crore ITC has been blocked by tax officers since May 16. Around Rs 87 crore have been recovered. He said ‘this shows that we need to plug the loopholes in registration and return filing... More refinement in the risk parameters for registration verification is required’.

On trade facilitation front, he said monthly return form GSTR-3B will be made more trade friendly by providing additional fields to report more granular data. The number of registered taxpayers in GST has more than doubled to 1.40 crore since the implementation of the tax regime six years ago.