LUCKNOW: The UP commercial tax department has identified 1.30 lakh tax defaulters who have not filed returns for the month of June.Around 71,000 of these are assessees who have not filed returns for the past six months. Despite this, the state has been second in the country in GST collection , the collection being Rs 5,272.38 crore in August.This, said commercial tax officers, was possible because the state had developed its own monitoring system which should have ideally been provided by the GSTN. “The department has used information technology in a massive way to identify defaulters. Data of all tax payers, collections, refunds etc is being maintained meticulously which is why we are able to identify defaulters.Regular messages are being sent to registered traders and UP has become the first state to send maximum online notices to traders, as has been mandated by the GST council,” said commercial tax commissioner Kamini Ratan Chauhan Officials say that because of the records that the department has started maintaining, it has also identified 49,420 dealers who, under the VAT regime, had to recoveries to the government but in transitioning to GST, registered afresh to avoid detection. “However, because they use the same PAN details, we were able to identify the defaulters. The state has managed to maintain second position in tax collection precisely because we are now able to keep track of defaulters and ensure that dues are recovered,” said an official.Chauhan said that in the absence of systems that should have been provided by the GSTN, the department developed its own return, refund and enforcement modules. It has held more than 100 camps for small traders in the past few months, leading to an increase in tax compliance through its scheme vanijya kar apke dwar.“With the new GST system going completely online, the department has shifted from traditional manual monitoring to ITbased analytical monitoring which is proving to be highly effective.Refunds, for instance, were stuck because GSTN did not have any system for monitoring claims. In UP, we worked out a model which captures details of traders when they file for refunds and our pendency has fallen drastically since then,” Chauhan said. The Department has now given directions to all zonal additional commissioners to acquire body-worn cameras that have to be worn during raids.