The Goods and Services Tax (GST) department has begun to identify instances of tax evasion and frauds identifying mismatches between E-way bills and the radio frequency tags used to cross toll plazas, Mint reported.

GST authorities are now comparing the data given at the time of generating e-way bills for goods movement with the actual movement of vehicles captured at toll plazas and identifying revenue leakages.

According to the report, the officials have busted a racket of unregistered firms transporting iron scraps under invoices of bogus and non-existing firms, the Central Board of Indirect Taxes and Customs (CBIC) said in a communication to field officers. Furthermore, authorities recovered fake invoices along with bogus tax credits of around Rs 14.5 crore.

E-way bills are required for goods to be moved that are more than Rs 50,000 in value. These bills are mapped to a Radio Frequency Identification Device (RFID) embedded onto the conveyance. This helps in cross verification of details of the goods transported in the bill to the physical movement and detect any mismatches.

This allows authorities to easily identify any revenue leakage points and check tax evasion and also helps genuine goods transporters as officials tend to focus on cases flagged in their IT system instead of suspecting all taxpayers.Earlier, GST Intelligence officials have detected tax evasion of around Rs 25 crore by a Haryana-based manufacturer of tobacco products, a senior official of the Chandigarh zonal office said on July 4.

Acting on intelligence-based inputs, tax sleuths, led by Joint Director Balwinder Singh and Deputy Director Navneet Kaushal, carried out raids on the premises of the firm in Tohana in Haryana.