NEW DELHI: A Central Board of Indirect Taxes and Customs notification states that an arrest can only be made in cases of goods and service tax-related offences if the sum is 20 million rupees or more.

The the indirect tax body has issued guidelines that tax officials need to follow while discharging their power of arrest in GST-related offences. Before arresting a person, the commissioner must determine if the arrest is required to ensure proper investigation or whether a person is likely to temper investigation or evidence, or if a person is involved in taking the fraudulent input tax credit, the notification read.

 In another notification, the Apex body said that tax officials will also have to "judiciously" exercise their power of issuing summons to the top management of companies including chief executive officers, chairman and managing directors, among others.

Senior officials will not be summoned at the first case, it said. The move comes after the apex body noticed that in certain cases, summons were issued by field officers to top officials in a routine manner to call for documents and evidence which are readily available on the GST portal. "They should be summoned when there are clear indications in the investigation of their involvement in the decision-making process which led to a loss of revenue," the instructions said.

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