Punjab Excise and Taxation department has detected a fraud to tune of Rs 200 crore whereby unscrupulous traders availed "concessional" rate of tax without submitting required form.

"We have found in our inspection that almost 3,000-4,000 traders have availed concessional rate of tax without depositing C form within six months of financial year end.

"Moreover, we have also found some traders submitted bogus C form (to avail lower rate of tax). The revenue implication in both these cases could be up to Rs 200 crore," Punjab Excise and Taxation, Commissioner, Anurag Verma told PTI today.

Under the Central Sales Tax Act, a C form has to be deposited by the supplier with the state taxation department after procuring it from his buyer in other state in order to avail CST rate of tax which is 2% at present. If the C form is not deposited by seller, then the local VAT rate is charged on goods supplied which is normally higher.

Acting tough against erring traders, the department has even blocked the Tax Identification Number (TIN) of about 400 registered dealers across the state to prevent them from carrying out further trading or business activity.

"We have even blocked TIN numbers of about 400 registered dealers and in other cases, we have issued notices to them to either pay tax or produce C form," he said.

"We found there was a huge deficiency in submission of C forms by the traders and it involved revenue implications of Rs 100 crore," he said, adding "we have asked traders to either produce C form or pay VAT."

Meanwhile, Punjab Pradesh Beopar Mandal President Amrit Lal Jain criticised the move of Excise and Taxation department blocking TIN number of registered sales tax dealers.

"There is a huge shortfall of C form in various states as a result of which traders could not deposit the forms. The department should have given sufficient time to dealers and traders to deposit forms rather than blocking their TIN numbers which will adversely affect trade and industry," he said.