“Exposes rampant cut practice in Healthcare System”
New Delhi : The Income Tax Department had raided several business groups that run hospitals in Haryana and New Delhi and seized documents that showed the existence of rampant cut practice offered to the referring doctors. The IT department said “ The referral payment has been fixed at a percentage of invoices raised to the patients. Evidences pertaining to transaction of benami nature have also been uncovered during the search action.”
One of the groups was maintaining a parallel set of books of account, indicating “systematic under-reporting” of receipts received from patients in cash, the IT department said in a statement. The modus-operandi adopted by this group included removal of invoices or “deflation” of the invoice amount by marking them as ‘Discounts/Concessions’ etc., at the time of discharge of patients from the hospital, it said. “This practice, resulting in evasion of income, is being followed across all the hospitals of the group and is spread over various years,” the statement said.
The other healthcare groups covered in the IT raid were found engaged in obtaining either “bogus or inflated” invoices for pharmaceutical drugs and/or medical devices such as stents, leading not only to suppression of actual profits, but also overcharging from the patients, it said.
“The money trail found during the investigations has further corroborated the fact that the groups have been receiving back cash in lieu of payments made through banking channels for these bogus/inflated invoices. “One of the hospitals of these groups was also found to be claiming wrong deduction over the years without fulfilling the necessary conditions for the hospital to be eligible as specified business,” it alleged. The IT department has detected black income of more than ₹ 150 crore in these raids. The search teams seized “unexplained” cash of ₹ 3.50 crore and jewellery worth ₹ 10 crore during the raids while 30 bank lockers have been sealed.