By Admin 
Tax Evasion Scam: It has not been easy to commit fraud in the digital age. No matter how cunning someone is, the digital trail left in the system eventually gets them caught. A similar case started with some “missing” bills of Biryani, which exposed tax evasion of about Rs 70,000 crore in the country. An investigation into the billing data of 1.77 lakh restaurants from 2019 revealed that on an average 27% of sales were being suppressed. Overall, turnover of about Rs 70,000 crore was hidden, due to which there is a possibility of tax loss of billions of dollars.
Karnataka deleted transactions worth around Rs 2,000 crore, Telangana deleted transactions worth around Rs 1,500 crore, large scale irregularities in Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra and Gujarat too. Scrutiny of 3,734 PANs of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana revealed suppressed sales of over Rs 5,000 crore. Undeclared turnover of around Rs 400 crore was found in a sample of only 40 restaurants. In some places about 25% of sales were hidden.
After this, the Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) expanded the scope of investigation to other states. Now the department is matching the reconstructed bills with tax returns and bank records and the process of issuing notices and fines may start soon.
What is the whole matter?
According to the report, the matter came to light when Income Tax Department officials in Hyderabad reached a restaurant for a routine check. This was not a raid. Billing was going on at the counter and customers were eating normally. But officials noticed that the number of customers present in the restaurant and the number of bills recorded in the billing system were not matching.
Some cash bills would appear in the system for a while and then disappear. The printed summaries looked fine, but the software logs told a different story. It was clear that this was not a simple mistake, but a planned manipulation. Big game exposed with billing software: Initially it was considered a local level disturbance, but investigation revealed that many restaurants were using the same billing software.
When the investigation reached the Ahmedabad-based backend of the software provider, about 60 terabytes of data of more than one lakh restaurants across the country came to light. Experts at Hyderabad’s Digital Lab started re-adding the deleted bills. Every transaction left a digital trail in the system, which could not be completely erased.
How did AI help?
Deleted bills were recovered with the help of Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools. Investigation revealed that in six years the restaurant had generated bills worth approximately Rs 2.43 lakh crore. Of these, bills worth more than Rs 13,000 crore were erased after being recorded. Some restaurants used to remove some cash bills every day. Some deleted bills for the entire 30 days at once. The objective was clear to pay less tax by showing less sales. The investigation revealed large-scale irregularities in many states.
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