New Delhi, Jan 24 (IANS): The Centre on Friday cautioned citizens against fraudsters issuing fake and fraudulent summons for Goods and Services Tax (GST) violations.

The Central Board of Indirect Taxes and Customs (CBIC) said it has been recently observed that some individuals with fraudulent intent are creating and sending fake summons to the taxpayers who may or may not be under investigation by the Directorate General of GST Intelligence (DGGI).

“The fake summons resembles very closely with the original due to use of Department’s logo and Document Identification Number (DIN),” said the CBIC in a statement.

However, these DIN numbers are fake and are used by the fraudsters to make the document look and feel genuine.

“It is once again clarified that taxpayers can easily verify the genuineness of any communication (including Summons) issued by any officer of CBIC by using the ‘VERIFY CBIC-DIN’ window on the CBIC’s website,” said the Ministry of Finance.

In case of suspicion of bogus summons, taxpayers may immediately report to DGGI/CGST formations, it added.

On verifying the DIN, if any individual or taxpayer finds that the summon, letter, notice is fake, it may immediately be reported to the office concerned.

This will enable the competent DGGI/CGST formation to take law enforcement action against the fraudsters for using fake summons/letter/notice to dupe the public.

The government last year launched a special drive by Central and state GST formations to identify and weed out fake GST registrations that are being used for massive ITC (input tax credit) frauds.

This drive will be undertaken in a coordinated manner between the Central and state formations. Based on certain identified risk parameters, close to 59,000 potential fake firms were identified for verification and further enquiry.