The I-T Department has found suppression of sales to the tune of over ₹1,000 crore at a leading retail chain outlet in Tamil Nadu.
On December 1, the department undertook search and seizure operations at 37 premises of two groups engaged in retail sales of jewellery, textiles and home appliances in Chennai, Coimbatore, Madurai and Tirunelveli. In one of the groups, it seized documents and incriminating materials revealing that the retail group was involved in a systematic sales suppression by manipulating books of accounts. “The extent of suppression of sales is found to be more than ₹1,000 crore, over several years. It was also found that the assessee had made unaccounted cash purchases of about ₹150 crore in textile and jewellery divisions, during the past few years,” a release said.
The department did not name the groups. The release said in the second group, suppressed taxable income of ₹80 crore was detected. The group was “found to be debiting inflated making charges of jewellery,” it said, adding that unaccounted rental receipts and scrap sales aggregating to ₹7 crore was also detected.
