Centre plans to make geotagging, biometrics mandatory to identify fake business entities

To curb the practice of fake GST invoices and bogus entities, the central government is planning to make geotagging of addresses of all companies mandatory — biometric authentication mandatory for entities found to be risky, finance ministry sources said

NEW DELHI — To curb the practice of fake GST invoices and bogus entities, the central government is planning to make geotagging of addresses of all companies mandatory.

Also there are plans to make biometric authentication mandatory for entities found to be risky, finance ministry sources said.

This exercise will help strengthen the GST system, they added.

Also verification of new entities during their registration needs to be more diligent, to weed out fake entities, the ministry officials have said.

To ensure this, the ministry plans to use biometric authentication through PAN and Aadhaar for risky or doubtful entities, sources said.

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As per provisions of GST legislation, the address of the business entity has to be physically present.

The ministry has in fact begun pilot projects in a few states, to geotag addresses of business entities to check their veracity and soon it may become a mandatory exercise, the ministry officials said.