Income mismatch probe: 5,000 companies under tax department lens

The Central Board of Direct Taxes has directed its tax sleuths to intensify enforcement action and launch search-and-survey operations against these firms

About 5,000 mid- and small-sized companies have come under the gaze of tax authorities for alleged income discrepancies and mismatches between their goods and services tax (GST) returns and income-tax (I-T) declarations for 2018-19.

The Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) has directed its tax sleuths to intensify enforcement action and launch search-and-survey operations against these firms, including owners of business houses, for supposedly overstating GST claims and understating income in tax filings.

This list has been prepared after scrutinising broad data mining by the GST Network (GSTN), which had detected discrepancies in summary sales returns after they did not