ROURKELA: A driver of
Rourkela
has received a Rs 4.31-crore tax evasion notice from the GST office, Cuttack. The notice accuses the person, Rajendra Pallai, of cheating the government of taxes by claiming input tax credit using
fake invoices
drawn in the name of a fake company.
Pallai, a resident of Sector 20 here, recently received the letter, which refers to him as the owner of a firm, RP Enterprises, and adds that this company has a tax liability of Rs 4.31 crore.
The letter (as seen by TOI) says RP Enterprises received taxable goods amounting to Rs 23,96,64,843 and claimed input tax credit of Rs 2,15,69,836 under CGST and Rs 2,15,69,863 under SGST on the basis of tax invoices issued by the company.
“In the course of the investigation, it has been ascertained that the concerned taxable entity is non-existent. Therefore, the input tax credit availed on the strength of invoices issued by such a tax payer is fake and without actual receipt of goods,” says the letter.
Hence, the input tax credit claimed on the strength of such fake invoices is subject to penal action under Section 74 of the
Odisha Goods and Service Act, 2017,” the letter adds.
Pallai said he had fallen victim to identity theft. “I had handed over my Aadhaar card and other personal documents to a person who claimed he would engage me in a job where I would get a monthly salary of Rs 10,000. I came to know that some fake company has been formed in my name with the help of my documents,” he added.
“I appeal to the authorities to initiate a probe into the case,” he said.
This is not the first such case in Rourkela. Local government officers said the repeated occurrence of similar cases pointed to the operation of a racket that uses the documents of unsuspecting persons to commit fraud. A daily-wage labourer,
Jamini Kanta Nayak
, had earlier lodged a complaint when it was found that someone had opened a fake bank account in his name with
The Urban Cooperative Bank Limited
, Rourkela.
On the basis of Nayak’s complaint, ADM (Rourkela) Aboli Sunil Narwane had asked the bank authorities to start an inquiry.