The Centre has detected Goods and Services Tax evasion of about Rs 7.08 lakh crore in the last five years, including input tax credit fraud of Rs 1.79 lakh crore, the finance ministry informed Lok Sabha on Monday.
Of the total GST evasion between FY21 and FY25, Rs 1.29 lakh crore tax has been voluntarily paid by taxpayers, minister of state for finance Pankaj Chaudhary told the Lok Sabha.
GST evasion rising sharply year-on-year
The GST evasion, which was Rs 49,384 crore in FY21, rose to Rs 2.3 lakh crore in FY24 and stood at Rs 2.23 lakh crore in FY25. The value of ITC fraud cases also rose from Rs 31,233 crore in FY21 to Rs 58,772 crore in FY25.
Use of analytics and audits
Chaudhary said the government has taken various steps to help in improving compliance and preventing tax evasion such as digitization through E-invoicing. Other steps include GST analytics such as automated risk assessment based on compliance attributes of taxpayer, highlighting of outliers based on system-flagged mismatches, providing actionable intelligence with an aim to manage GST revenue risks through various tools, generating inputs regarding GST non-compliances or evasion on the basis of identifying anomalies in taxpayer behaviour (such as potential tax evasion fraudulent registration, and suspicious e-way bill activity etc.) and selection of returns for scrutiny and selection of taxpayers for audit based on various risk parameters.
Responding to a question, the minister said the net Central GST collection compared to the Revised Estimates (RE) was 96.7% in 2024-25. Net CGST includes CGST, integrated GST and compensation cess.
Actual collection stood at over Rs 10.26 lakh crore in FY25, as against RE of nearly Rs 10.62 lakh crore.
In FY24, net CGST collection was over Rs 9.57 lakh crore, or 100.1% of the RE of Rs 9.56 lakh crore.