SGST Department raids B2C Traders for ITC Fraud at 52 Locations

Recently a probe has been taken place by SGST at the 52 locations, all of them for the B2C traders.

It has been found in the recent investigation that traders of ceramics, scrap, mobile phones, cosmetics, food products and those from hotels and restaurants, tour operators, coaching classes, and printing services were involved in evading 8 crores of GST.

In all, the raid was taken place at 23 trading firms in seven districts of Gujarat. To name a few, Surat (20 locations), Vadodara (15 locations), Dang (15 locations), Bhavnagar (5 locations), Gandhinagar (3 locations), Mehsana (3 locations), and Rajkot (1 location)

SGST officials recovered documents and evidence related to intra-state transactions from these premises.

Officials from the department discovered discrepancies between the real inventory and the records as well. Seized documents showed that these companies had fraudulently claimed input tax credits. The SGST officials has been researching market trends across several industries. This allows the government to identify tax evaders and build system-based intelligence profiles for them. The majority of the dealers participating are B2C traders. This differs from the typical method of operation used by business-to-business to fraudulently claim input tax credits (ITC).