TIN scam was exposed late, says Bangalore tax official

The computerisation of tax procedures has helped the commercial tax department to unearth illegal business transactions worth several billions in the last few years.

But this fraud could have been exposed much early had the department conducted regular checks manually, a senior official said.

The data gathered through e-saral scheme exposed over 200 cases where businessmen obtained fake taxpayers’ identification number (TIN) and made business worth crores of rupees without paying tax to the department.

“Initially, we checked details of every suspicious TIN number based on which the department instructed the officials to conduct a detailed inspection,” said Subhod Yadav, additional commissioner of commercial tax.

On Monday, assistant commissioner of commercial tax, Hucche Gowda, filed a forgery and cheating complaint against Asadulla, owner of Neha Enterprises in DJ Halli.

Asadulla had obtained the TIN number in 2007 for his ‘hardware shop’ and data available with the department showed that he had transacted Rs23.3 crore business between 2007 and 2010.

However, when Asadulla had to pay tax arrears of Rs1.4 crore and was blacklisted, officials on inspection found that he had no shop in the given address.

According to Yadav, there are lakhs of businessmen in the state like Asadulla who avail TIN numbers to hoodwink tax officials.