For a casual viewer, it may appear to be like any other petty street food shop selling 'kachori' (puri stuffed with spices) and 'samosa', whose owner may be struggling hard to make ends meet.
Regular customers who enjoyed the delicious 'kachoris' at 'Mukesh Kachoriwala' near Seema Talkies in Uttar Pradesh's Aligarh town, about 400 kilometres from here, as well as commercial tax sleuths were shocked to find that the annual turnover of the roadside shop was more than Rs. 60 lakh.
The owner, Mukesh Kumar, who has been selling 'kachoris' and 'samosas' for the past several years, has been slapped with a notice by the commercial tax department.
The Special Investigation Bureau (SIB) sleuths of the Commercial Tax department, tried to assess the sales at the shop by secretly standing near it from the time it opened till its closure.
''We stood at a nearby shop and tried to make an assessment of the sale....we did it for five-six days and found that it would be around Rs. 60 lakh annually,'' said a senior SIB official in Aligarh.
After the assessment, the sleuths slapped a tax notice on Mukesh. ''As per the law, his shop should have been registered under the GST....five per cent tax is payable on all sales,'' the official said.
Mukesh, however, does not believe it. ''I am just a petty street food seller...I don't know if I sell this much...I never kept a record of the sales,'' he said.
He, however, said that he would comply with the rules and regulations and pay due taxes.
The SIB sleuths feel that there may be many 'kachori' sellers in the town like Mukesh. ''Kachori selling street shops in the busy localities are on our radar,'' the official added.
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