The Telangana Commercial Taxes Department, on Thursday issued show cause notices to 7000 traders on ground of failure to remit taxes with the department. The tax dues from these traders is around Rs. 708 crore.
While filing income tax returns for the period 2nd June 2014 to 1st June 2017, these traders claimed that they have to pay certain amount of VAT to the state government. But, as per their disclosure in the returns, they failed to pay VAT to the tune of 708 crore.
To check evasion, the commercial tax department prepared a list of 7000 defaulters and sent notices to such traders via online with the help of IIT-Hyderabad.
“We have prepared Return Balance Module to send the notices to the traders,” said Commercial Taxes department principal secretary Somesh Kumar.
The notice provided a time of seven days to the traders to pay the tax, on failure to do which, the department will proceed with strong action.
After the implementation of GST, VAT dealers registered with GST network but failed to pay the tax.
GST payers’ list was not available with the state government and hence the officials could not cross-check. “We have no information about GST payers. But, still we could prepare a list of defaulters with the help of previous VAT details on our own,” Somesh Kumar explained. Sources said the other reason for GST evasion is that there are no stringent penalties for defaulters.
