RAX® Identifies Tax Leakage in Airline Sales Audit

The insane accuracy of RAX®, RASSURE’S Sales Audit and BIDT Platform not only identifies errors by travel agents, it also highlights potential systemic issues which may have far reaching implications.

Let’s illustrate that sentence with a recent real case. While performing a Sales Audit for one of our clients, RAX identified a potential issue in the tax filing data related to Goods and Services Tax (GST) in India. This tax (known as K3 within the airline industry)  is applicable to all journeys originating in India.

While populating records for GST Tax, fare filing providers populated a conflicting pair of  rules regarding the point of ticketing that would apply for the K3 tax as it applies to change fees. In one record, the point of ticketing was Nation India for all carriers. ie, any ticket for journeys originating in India and ticked in India will require GST(K3) to be collected.  At the same time, there was another conflicting record which stipulated that K3 tax is valid for any worldwide sale for any travel originating from India. This conflicting information creates an ambiguous situation on what the tax liability is truly.  RASSURE has estimated that there could be a potential leakage of US$70,000 annualised between Premium and Economy classes, for chargeable K3 amounts where the ticket is sold in countries other than India. 

The conflicting data was identified during a routine calibration run by RASSURE’S AI based RAX platform, for a new client that operated in the Indian market. RASSURE immediately raised an alert with the fare filling provider. Prompt corrective action was taken. It turned out the more expansive rule was the correct one. This anomaly has existed undetected for over 3 years despite this traffic being audited by some of the largest service providers in the industry. That RAX identified a $70,000 p.a. Tax leakage on its first outing with this client  is yet another awesome testimony to its insane accuracy. This contribution also helped the aviation industry to improve through correct calculation of taxes and avoiding future tax liabilities.

Not Detected, Not Seen, Lost Profit.

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