Officials of the state goods and services tax department (SGST) recently raided some business to consumer (B2C) traders dealing in several products at some 52 locations in the state.
It was found that traders of ceramics, scrap, mobile phones, cosmetics, food products and those from the services sector such as hotels and restaurants, tour operators, coaching classes and printing services, were involved in evading Rs 8 crore of GST.
The raids were conducted on 23 trading firms in seven districts of Gujarat: Surat (20 locations), Vadodara (15), Dang (5), Bhavnagar (5), Gandhinagar (3), Mehsana (3) and Rajkot (1).
SGST officials recovered documents and evidence related to intra-state transactions from these premises.
Department officials also found differences between actual inventory and what was on record. Documents seized revealed that these firms had illegally claimed input tax credit. The SGST department has been studying market practices in various sectors. Based on this, tax evaders are detected, and the department creates profiles from system-based intelligence. Most traders involved are business-to-consumer traders. This is unlike the conventional modus operandi of illegally claiming input tax credit (ITC) by business-to-business (B2B) entities.