The Central Board of Indirect Taxes and Customs (CBIC) is working on biometric authentication of risky entities under the Goods and Services Tax (GST) as it looks to crack down on fraudsters who are misusing the PAN and Aadhaar of other people to obtain GST registration, CBIC chief Vivek Johri said.
He said that the tax authorities were also discussing some more tightening in the GST return filing system to limit the scope of claiming Input Tax Credit (ITC), when taxes had not been paid by suppliers in the supply chain.
The CBIC chief further said that during the ongoing drive against fake registration, GST officers had identified around 12,500 bogus entities, which were used to claim fake ITC and defraud the exchequer.
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The biometric authentication of authorised representatives or directors or partners of a company would be made for new registration applications and existing businesses registered under GST if tax officers had a suspicion that the entities were being set up only to fraudulently claim ITC.
Also, geo-tagging of all entities was being planned by CBIC officers to authenticate that the address provided during GST registration was the place from where the entity operated, Mr. Johri told reporters.
A pilot project on biometric authentication and geo-tagging was already under way in a couple of States, and depending on the results and evaluation of digital infrastructure requirements, the project would be launched pan India.
"We are trying to see how we can tighten the system further...We have been using OTP-based authentication earlier. Now, we are going to go in for biometric authentication also. Which would mean that in suspicious cases, persons will be asked to go to an Aadhaar centre to have their biometrics verified," Mr. Johri said.
