In UPA era, Anurag Kashyap was charged for evading service tax of Rs 55 lakh by I-T dept

Director and producer Anurag Kashyap, who has been recently accused of tax evasion, was also charged with similar offence in 2013. When the Congress-led UPA was in power, the Income Tax department had conducted raids at Anurag Kashyap’s properties and charged him of evading service tax to the tune of Rs 55 lakh in 2013.

This comes at a time opposition leaders have alleged that Anurag Kashyap has been raided by the I-T department due to his recent remarks against the Modi Government.

Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman had dismissed the allegations earlier, saying that raids had been conducted in 2013 also but no one raised questions back then.

The 2013 case against Kashyap

A case in 2013 was initiated by the Deputy Commissioner of Service Tax Department Sameer Wankhede against Bollywood personalities who had not paid service tax. An investigation by Sameer Wankhede found that Anurag Kashyap had evaded service tax to the tune of Rs 55 lakh after which a case was filed against him.

The residential and official premises of Anurag Kashyap including Phantom Films was searched by the officials of the Service Tax department under the supervision of Sameer Wankhede. Kashyap was summoned to appear before them on August 22, 2013.

However, Anurag Kashyap failed to appear for his questioning after which his bank accounts were sealed.

Sources say Anurag Kashyap had then approached the court over the action against him by the tax department. However, later on, he did appear before the probe agency to record his statement and paid a fine after which his account was unfrozen.

Kashyap’s tax evasion case of 2021

The IT officials who raided the official and residential premises of Anurag Kashyap this time, claim to have found bogus expenditure of the director having tax implication of about Rs 20 crore

In a statement on Thursday IT department said, “During their searches, evidence of huge suppression of income by the leading Film Production house (Phantom films) compared to the actual box office collections has been unearthed. The company officials have not been able to explain a discrepancy of around Rs 300 crore.”

The officials have also allegedly found evidence related to manipulation and under-valuation of share transactions of the production house amongst the film directors and shareholders, having tax implications of about Rs 350 crore.

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