PALAKKAD: Finance Minister T.M. Thomas Isaac has said that in the raid conducted at 31 steel smelting and re-rolling units in the district on Wednesday the preliminary estimate found huge evasion of sales tax and central excise duty to the tune of Rs.200 crore annually.

Addressing presspersons here, the Minister said that 31 factories each having a turnover of more than Rs.10 crore annually were raided by Commercial Taxes Department officials. They also raided houses of six factory owners in Palakkad and one each in Kozhikode and Ernakulam.

The Minister said that on a prima facie examination it was found that the State Government lost between Rs.30 crore to Rs.40 crore annually as sales tax at 4 per cent rate. But the Union Government lost four times more with a tax rate of 16 per cent excise duty and two per cent cess on it. He said that it was found that one of the raided factories at Kanjikode evaded central excise tax to the tune of Rs.426 lakh between July 2004 and February 2006.

Another factory in Kanjikode evaded a tax of Rs.363.30 lakh between March 2004 and February 2006. Yet another unit evaded a tax of Rs.363 lakh during 2002-2004 period.

He said that last year these companies paid a tax of Rs.25 crore to the Government. But it was only half of the real tax as they had suppressed their production by half.

He said that in the raid large number of vital documents to prove the tax evasion were seized.

It was found that the companies were suppressing the actual use of oil, electricity and scrap to show less quantity of production.

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