Revenue department's audit commissionerates investigation teams in Chennai have unearthed service and central excise duty evasion of Rs 45 crore up to December in the current financial year, a senior official said.
"In the year 2013-14, Chennai's audit commissionerates investigating teams have detected service and central excise duty evasion of Rs 132 crore. In the current financial year, up to December, the Chennai's audit commissionerates have detected service and central duty evasion of Rs 45 crore," Commissioner of Central Excise (Chennai) Roopam Kapoor said.
"The detection of evasion is the result of intensified survey and intelligence gathering which has resulted in this detection," Kapoor added.
In 2008, the Central Board of Excise and Customs(CBEC) has created a separate wing in the department called Audit Commissionerate, to look into two key issues: integrated and risk-based audits.
Integrated audit means combining excise duty, custom duty and service tax, and risk-based audit refers to selection of units to be audited after using multiple parameters derived from the ACES (Automation of Central Excise and Service Tax) portal.
At present, there are 45 audit commissionerate in India, of which 9 Audit Commissionerates look into Service Tax evasion cases and 36 Audit Commissionerates look into Central Excise evasion cases.
Audits are carried by the audit commissionerate if a registered manufacturer has an aggregate excise liability of over Rs 3 crore, the audit is conducted annually.
For those having an excise liability of between Rs 50 lakh and Rs 1 crore, the excise audit is conducted once in five years.
For indirect taxes, comprising central excise, service tax and customs, an audit is the only mechanism available to the government to keep a check on tax leakage.
Such audits are carried out at the physical location of the factory by group of 2-3 officials.
