Honest taxpayers need not worry about display of GST details: Govt

The Department of Revenue (DoR) has reiterated that there will be no extra compliance burden on the taxpayer for GST turnover displayed in the Form 26AS. The turnover is being shown in 26AS just for the information of taxpayer, the official said requesting anonymity. DoR is an arm of the finance ministry.

The government on Monday said honest taxpayers need not to worry about the display of their Goods and Services Tax (GST) details in the new self-generated income-tax form, which is a self-generated ready reckoner that also prompts habitual offenders against deliberate tax evasion, a finance ministry official said.

In a nationwide drive against GST fake invoice frauds, started last Monday, within four days 25 arrests have been made against 1,180 entities, a finance ministry official said(File Photo)

The Department of Revenue (DoR) has reiterated that there will be no extra compliance burden on the taxpayer for GST turnover displayed in the Form 26AS. The turnover is being shown in 26AS just for the information of taxpayer, the official said requesting anonymity. DoR is an arm of the finance ministry.

“DoR acknowledged that there may be some differences in GSTR-3Bs filed and the GST shown in the Form 26AS, but it can’t happen that a person shows turnover of crores in GST and doesn’t pay a single rupee of income tax. There are quite a few such cases that have been detected in data analytics,” the official said.

Recently, it has been noticed that many unscrupulous persons are trying to avail or pass on input tax credit fraudulently by generating fake invoices. In a nationwide drive against GST fake invoice frauds, started last Monday, within four days 25 arrests have been made against 1,180 entities, he said. “Fake invoicing is now been handled with very serious measures as this results into substantial leakage of both direct tax and indirect tax revenue,” he added.

In order to tackle the problem of fake invoices, the department has already formulated a strategy for identifying these invoice generators through their income tax profiles. “These persons in most of the cases never file their income tax returns or disclose very meagre taxable income in the income tax return,” he said.