Hyderabad: What began as a routine inspection of a few biryani outlets in Hyderabad has snowballed into the exposure of a massive tax evasion racket operating in restaurants across the country.
Investigators discovered that several eateries were underreporting their income to dodge taxes. Over the past few years, this alleged manipulation is estimated to have resulted in tax evasion worth nearly ₹70,000 crore, according to a report by The Times of India.
The breakthrough came after officials examined a widely used billing software platform employed by over one lakh restaurants nationwide. Using advanced data analytics and artificial intelligence tools, authorities scrutinised billing records from nearly 1.77 lakh establishments, analysing around 60 terabytes of data. The probe revealed that after customers completed payments, numerous bills were either deleted or altered within the system.
Across India, restaurants using this software allegedly erased bills amounting to more than ₹13,000 crore. In Andhra Pradesh and Telangana alone, concealed sales were estimated at over ₹5,100 crore. To verify the findings, officials conducted physical inspections at 40 restaurants, comparing actual transactions with digital records. Even this limited exercise uncovered nearly ₹400 crore in unaccounted sales.
Karnataka emerged as the state with the highest suspected evasion, followed by Telangana and Tamil Nadu. In some cases, restaurants reportedly did not even attempt to delete bills but simply declared lower earnings while filing tax returns.
How Restaurant Manipulated Billing Software to Evade Taxes
Investigators found that while billing systems are generally designed to prevent employee-level theft by recording all forms of payment, cash, card and UPI, some owners themselves allegedly misused the software. One common method involved deleting cash transactions, which are harder to trace. In other instances, entire days or even months of billing data were wiped out before filing returns reflecting minimal income.
The data under review covered restaurant sales totalling nearly ₹2.43 lakh crore over six years. Officials worked from digital forensic labs, using AI tools to cross-check billing information with GST registrations and publicly available records.
The investigation initially focused on Hyderabad, Visakhapatnam and surrounding areas before expanding nationwide once the scale of the irregularities became clear. Authorities indicated that the findings may only represent a fraction of the problem, noting that multiple other billing software systems are in use and could potentially be exploited in similar ways.
Disclaimer : This story is auto aggregated by a computer programme and has not been created or edited by DOWNTHENEWS. Publisher: ZEE News
