FORENSIC ACCOUNTING ANALYSIS USING BENFORD’S LAW ON GST COLLECTIONS OF WEST BENGAL

As a new evolving profession Forensic Accounting has gained a lot of faith and belief in the eyes of court of law in the recent years to investigate, detect frauds, misstatements and malpractices. Forensic Accounting investigations are conducted by professionals and they use various techniques and methods to collect evidences for their investigations. One of such commonly used method is Benford’s Law analysis. The present study focusses on detection of irregularities, potential anomalies in GST collections from West Bengal using Benford’s Law and to assess the conformity of GST data (CGST, SGST, IGST, and CESS) to expected patterns or distributions. Dataset used comprises of GST collections of West Bengal state from July 2017 to June 2024. The results of the analysis indicated certain anomalies or deviation in case of CESS. The CGST data showed the highest level of conformity. It shows that data published by the government in the official GST website in certain months may be little under reported or over reported.作为一门新兴发展中的职业，法务会计（Forensic Accounting）近年来在司法审判领域获得了广泛认可与信赖，被广泛用于调查、侦测欺诈、错报及不当行为。法务会计调查由专业人员执行，其会运用各类技术方法收集调查所需的证据，其中一种常用手段便是本福特定律（Benford’s Law）分析。本研究聚焦于运用本福特定律，侦测西孟加拉邦商品及服务税（GST）收入中的异常状况与潜在偏差，并评估各类GST相关数据（CGST、SGST、IGST及CESS）与预期分布模式的契合程度。本研究使用的数据集涵盖2017年7月至2024年6月期间西孟加拉邦的商品及服务税收入数据。分析结果显示，CESS相关数据存在一定异常或偏差；CGST数据则展现出最高的契合度。这表明，部分月份印度政府官方GST网站发布的数据可能存在小幅少报或多报的情况。