Ludhiana: Firm booked for not paying Rs 3.3 cr GST

LUDHIANA: Goods and Services Tax (GST) commissionerate, Ludhiana, has booked a prominent city firm for non-payment of Rs 3.3-crore GST. The action was taken by the department’s anti-evasion wing, which had recently busted a nexus of middlemen facilitating tax evasion by issuing genuine e-way bills for safe transport of goods within Punjab and cancelling them later.
Besides defaulting on GST payment, the printing, packing material and plastic kitchenware manufacturer on Tajpur Road was not filing GST returns from April 2018.
Sources in the department said an investigation was ordered against the company by the Central GST commissioner Ashutosh Baranwal. Acting on it, the officials of the department found during probe that the firm had collected GST of Rs 3.3 crore from customers on sale of goods but did not deposit it with the department.
The firm had Rs 2.6 crore available as input tax credit (ITC) in its account, which was adjusted automatically by GST commissionerate against the liability of Rs 3.3 crore payable by the firm towards the government. And after being pursued to pay the balance Rs 70 lakh, the owners paid Rs 17.85 lakh on the spot. They were ordered to pay the remaining GST liability along with interest and penalty by September 30.
Deputy commissioner of the anti-evasion wing of the GST commissionerate Daljit Kaur could not be contacted, but sources said more such companies in Ludhiana were on the department’s radar.
The department officials were tight-lipped about the developments.
After the implementation of GST in July 2017, Ludhiana commissionerate has detected evasions of Rs 49.74 crore in both GST and service tax and recovered Rs 29 crore till August 2018.
In 2017-18 financial year, 14 cases of evasion of GST of Rs 7.94 crore and four cases of evasion of service tax of Rs 8.17 crore were detected by the Ludhiana commissionerate’s anti-evasion team. Of these, recoveries of Rs 87 lakh in GST and Rs 1.66 crore in service tax were made. In the 2018-19 fiscal up to August 2018, the team detected nine cases of GST evasion of Rs 22.78 crore. Of these, Rs 16.25 crore has been recovered. Besides, three service tax cases involving Rs 10.82 crore were detected, of which Rs 9.83 crore was recovered. In one of the cases, the department detected and recovered Rs 15 crore from a management consultancy company.