The Centre on Monday said that as many as 2,784 cases of GST evasion involving Rs 14,302 crore were detected in April-May, while Rs 5,716 crore was recovered during the period.

Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman in a written reply in the Lok Sabha gave details of Goods and Services Tax (GST) and income tax evasion, as well as detection of outright smuggling by the Customs department.

As per the data, GST evasion of over Rs 2.68 lakh crore was detected in 43,516 cases between 2020-21 and 2023-24 (April-May). A recovery of Rs 76,333 crore was made during the period while 1,020 persons were arrested.

As per the statistics on surveys, searches and seizures carried out by the Income Tax Department in the last 5 years, searches were conducted on 3,946 groups while assets worth Rs 6,662 crore was seized.

In the last four years, 42,754 cases of outright smuggling detected by the Customs Department, involving value of about Rs 46,000 crore.

Sitharaman said with the availability of information in electronic form, the Income Tax Department has developed a wide range of non-intrusive methods for detecting tax evasion. Besides, the GST department too is taking a number of steps to tackle evasion, including using robust data analytics and artificial intelligence to identify and track risky taxpayers; sharing of data with partner law enforcement agencies for more targeted interventions; reduction in threshold limit for issue of e-invoice for B2B transactions from Rs 10 crore to Rs 5 crore from August 1, 2023.

The Finance Minister further said that data analysis based risk management and intelligence development along with human intelligence are being employed to gather actionable intelligence, which has resulted in substantial detections of tax evasion in recent years.

(With inputs from PTI)