Pan-India I-T survey on 70 eateries over 'billing fraud'

HYDERABAD: I-T sleuths on Sunday launched a pan-India survey of around 70 restaurants, including some in Delhi and Mumbai, to scan alleged billing software manipulation for suppression of sales and lower tax payments.The sales concealment for the 70 outlets is around Rs 700 crore, part of a wider understatement of Rs 70,000 crore linked to such billing manipulation by restaurants across the country, officials said.The 70 outlets, surveyed on directives of Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT), were spread across 45 cities, from Madurai to Shimla and Godhra to Guwahati, apart from Delhi and Mumbai.The nationwide action followed an earlier crackdown in Telangana where inspections and surveys were conducted in about 40 restaurants, with suspected sales understatement of over Rs 490 crore.According to income tax and CBDT sources, Hyderabad was among the first locations where investigators began examining the issue. Hyderabad I-T officials conducted searches of a chain of biryani restaurants and later scanned several hotels uncovering myriad methods to suppress revenues.Investigators found certain cash transactions were deleted from their software at the end of the month to reduce declared income and, therefore, reduce income tax and GST payments. Another ploy detected during the probe involved declaring only a limited percentage of revenue in I-T returns.Probe into tax evasion began after investigators gained access to huge volumes of data at a software company's Ahmedabad centre. The numbers were parsed at Hyderabad's income tax office to detect the alleged manipulation, the officials said.