A bogus billing scam to fraudulently get input tax credits from the Gujarat commercial tax department has been unearthed. Officials have detected Rs 8 crore value added tax (Vat) evasion through such bogus bills involving 12 traders, including five traders from Ahmedabad and four from Bhavnagar. The traders were involved in giving bills with cancelled sales tax registrations numbers.

"We had information about a state-wide scam of bogus bills. After gathering intelligence, we carried out searches on the premises of these 12 traders and detected an evasion of Rs 8.22 crore. We collected Rs 3.12 crore of evaded tax on the spot," said a senior Gujarat commercial tax official.

Officials said that many more traders who have used these bills to either evade entry tax or fraudulently take input-tax credit from the department are under the scanner. The department had earlier found couple of tax consultants helping traders with bogus bills of companies whose registrations have been cancelled to evade tax or take false credit. tnn