CAG report lends credibility to TG govt’s probe into GST scam

Hyderabad: Giving credence to the state government’s recent probe into the GST scam during the BRS regime, the CAG (Comptroller and Auditor General) has exposed irregularities in the GST input tax credit and tax payments by the business organizations. It may be mentioned here that the CID has booked a case against former Chief Secretary Somesh Kumar and a few top officials of the state Commercial Taxes department in the alleged GST scam. The probe agency suspects that a fraud of Rs 1000 crore in the GST collections had taken place.

The CAG has found that “errors in the GST and VAT collections were related to Input Tax Credit (ITC) of Rs 7,589 crore. It has found mismatch of Rs 247 crore in input tax credit availed and tax payments.” The report said that many companies did not file GST returns and the Commercial Tax Department officers did not issue notices. It is said that there were instances where companies submitted wrong calculations in the returns in the suburban circles including the Hyderabad City. The report said that the officials had failed to detect the mismatch during scrutiny and did not act on it.

The GST returns of companies with a turnover of more than Rs 5 crore have been calculated in an inconsistent manner and a total of 14 types of errors have been found. The CAG report explained that 124 types of errors related to some companies were brought to the notice of the department based on the available figures, but no action was taken by the department.

The CAG report said that letters were written to the department seeking the details of violations in tax collections. There was no reply so far. Many loopholes like input tax credit, non-submission of returns on time, mentioning wrong figures, non-payment of penalty were common in many circles in Hyderabad. The CAG also found that the state government had failed to generate more revenues from the Transport department to correct assessments and refunds of life tax and quarterly tax. There was no payment of bilateral tax and green tax by vehicle owners and non-payments of tax on gross traffic earned by the Telangana State Road Transport Corporation, it said. Instances of non-renewal of fitness certificates of vehicles and non-installation of speed limiting devices in transport vehicles were also noticed.