Income tax dept surveys offices of Flipkart arm Instakart, Swiggy

The Income Tax Department is conducting a survey at Instakart (a group company of Flipkart) and food ordering and delivery company Swiggy here in connection with an alleged bogus input tax credit (ITC) connected to an external vendor, sources informed on Thursday.

According to sources, the survey was conducted on the input provided by the Directorate General of GST Intelligence (DGGI) who is currently running a nationwide drive against GST evaders to minimise the misuse of the system. DGGI has found GST invasion and referred the case to income tax to check the income tax evasion.

A Flipkart spokesperson confirmed the survey being conducted by the IT department and said that the company is ensuring full compliance.

"The officials from the Income Tax Department have contacted us. We are providing them with all the required information and are extending our full co-operation. We believe we are in full compliance with all applicable tax and legal requirements," the Flipkart spokesperson said.

"Flipkart employs more than two lakh people. It helps bring three lakh Micro Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) and over six lakh, artisans/weavers, to market using technology," he added.

Last week in an interview to ANI, Finance Secretary Ajay Bhushan Pandey had said that to minimise the misuse of the system, the government has kept a check on those persons who were claiming excess Input Tax Credit (ITC).

"We have centralised the data from different agencies and analysing it through artificial intelligence. We got to know that there are a number of people who are showing income of a few lakhs in their income tax returns but in GST they are showing turnovers in crores," Pandey had said.

"We are also getting information that some unscrupulous persons are importing items worth crores of rupees but they are not reflected in their GST or income tax returns. Now, we are acting on these tax evaders on specific data-based information with a targeted approach," he added.