Over 47,000 entities in Mumbai Metropolitan Region under the scanner for CGST tax evasion

Over 47 thousand Central Goods and Service Tax (CGST) non-filers in the Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR) are under the radar of the Mumbai zone of CGST's Anti-tax Evasion department.

The department has started taking stricter action against the evasion, "The department had given around 7 months for the new law to settle down and had many hand-holding programmes to create awareness. Now as it has been done, we have started taking action against evaders," said Manpreet Arora, Additional Commissioner of CGST and Central Excise.

The department has started registering cases against such tax evaders and CGST Act gives powers of arrest in such cases in which evasion is more than 2 crores. If evasion is of more than 5 crores then the offence is non-bailable and bail can be granted by the Magistrate court only. The act also gives a power of attachment of defaulter properties if they do not pay the taxes.

Another official from the CGST said that the major tax evasion observed in the GST Regime is that some of the taxpayers are not filing their GSTR-SB returns since the inception of GST and there are also few who have not filed any taxes since past several years in Mumbai zone.