Gujarat Targets Rs 84,050 Crore GST Collection, Plans More Raids on Tax Evaders

Gujarat’s state government has instructed its commercial tax department to collect at least 5% more than the budgetary estimate of Rs 81,000 crore for 2026-27, as Gujarat’s GST collections are falling short of expectations.

It will directly result in more raids, searches and enforcement action against tax evaders.

Chief Secretary Manoj Das at a meeting represented an increase of over Rs 10,000 crore as compared to the Rs 74,000 crore actually collected in 2025-26, making the revised target of Rs 84,050. Officials said that the government was committed to achieving this through tighter enforcement and technology-driven detection and described this as a “tall task”.

Authorities are now further planning to step up raids and conduct searches and introduce more verification mechanisms to detect fraud. An official said, “The aim is to adopt a two-pronged strategy of boosting efficiency of the department and checking evasion simultaneously.”

The government believes that GST collections have fallen short of expectations due to several factors, including GST rate cuts on certain products such as vehicles that were announced last year. At the same time, the need for higher revenue generation has been increased because of rising expenditure on infrastructure and development project, prompting the state to set a more aggressive collection target.

Along with stronger enforcement measures, Gujarat is continously relying on technology to detect GST fraud. The state’s Commercial Tax Department has partnered with the Bhaskaracharya National Institute for Space Applications and Geo-informatics (BISAG-N) to develop an advanced system that uses artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) to identify fraudulent input tax credit (ITC) claims.

Officials said that nearly 29 crore ITC-related transactions are recorded in Gujarat every year, making manual verification almost impossible. The AI-powered system is being designed to analyse massive volume of data, identify suspicious transactions, and flag potentially fraudulent entities. The technology is expected to help tax authorities detect tax evasion more efficiently and take timely action against offenders.

Along with technology-driven monitoring, the Commercial Tax Department has been directed to strengthen its human intelligence network to detect GST evasion at the ground level. The combined use of advanced analytics, AI tools, field investigations, and enforcement actions is expected to play a important role in helping Gujarat achieve its enhanced GST revenue target for the current financial year.