Moratorium under IBC restricts suits against the corporate debtor, but prosecutions may continue against responsible individuals.
Moratorium under the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code bars institution or continuation of proceedings against a corporate debtor but does not preclude prosecutions against natural persons who were in charge of and responsible for the company's business at the relevant time; nominated director immunity remains a defence and complaints must aver responsibility for non-signatory directors to justify issuance of process. (AI Summary)

Reasoned orders required: Courts must decide merits and not refuse petitions from disinclination; remand for fresh consideration.
Courts and adjudicative authorities must not permit personal inclination or disinclination to determine outcomes; judges must consider pleadings, evidence, and submissions with an open mind and provide reasoned orders. Dismissals based solely on lack of inclination are deficient. Reasoned orders should narrate facts, frame issues, record submissions, apply legal principles, and explain findings so that matters are decided on merits and can be meaningfully challenged; failure to do so may require remand for fresh consideration. (AI Summary)

Temporary surrender of professional membership ceases; insolvency professionals cannot temporarily surrender membership under updated IBBI rules.
Regulation 7 and 7A require registration and a valid authorization for assignment to act as an insolvency professional; prior Model Bye-laws and Regulation 10 set out procedures, forms, reporting obligations to the Board, and grounds for non-acceptance or refusal of temporary surrender and revival. Subsequent amendments and a Board clarification removed the prior temporary surrender mechanism, so insolvency professionals cannot temporarily surrender membership under the current regime. (AI Summary)

Show cause notice under CGST Act can be issued to challenge refund orders after adjudication.
Apex and High Court directions permit revenue authorities to issue a show cause notice to recover adjudicated refund orders, with taxpayers allowed to challenge the notice's scope; administrative measures include delegated approval for physical verification in Rajasthan, targeted exemptions from e-way bill obligations for specified intra- and inter-district movements, deployment of a restoration-of-cancelled-registration functionality to implement judicial/appellate orders, and advisories enforcing e-invoice compliance and portal registration. (AI Summary)

Adjudication under GST: proper show cause notices, personal hearing rights and limited adjournments govern procedural fairness.
Adjudication under GST requires a clear, quantified show cause notice that respects jurisdiction and natural justice; a person must be afforded a personal hearing, limited adjournments, and the adjudicating order must be reasoned, dated, signed and confined to grounds stated in the notice. Appellate modification of tax alters corresponding interest and penalty, separate interest orders are unnecessary, and limitation periods may be excluded while parallel appeals on the same issue progress through appellate fora. (AI Summary)

Condonation of delay: saving draft appeal forms and evidence of failed online filings supports requests when portals fail.
Difficulty and unreliability of the online portal can impede timely filing of appeals; practitioners should prepare and save draft Form 35 well in advance, deposit appeal fees online for confirmation, compile supporting material offline for copy paste entry, remove unsupported special characters, and preserve time stamped drafts and evidence of attempted filings to substantiate requests for condonation of delay when portal failures prevent timely uploading. (AI Summary)

Pre-deposit requirement under MSME Act is mandatory; deposit before challenge required, installments allowed for hardship.
The pre-deposit obligation under Section 19 of the MSME Act is a mandatory threshold that must be satisfied before a court entertains an application to set aside an award arising from Facilitation Council or ADR centre proceedings; courts may allow the prescribed deposit to be paid in instalments if undue hardship is shown, but until the required deposit is made the challenge under the Arbitration Act will not be entertained and execution proceedings may continue. (AI Summary)

Audit under GST: document inspection limited to legally required records, not ad hoc or irrelevant demands.
Audit under GST verifies turnover, taxes, refunds and input tax credit by examining records, returns and other documents maintained under GST and other laws. Officers may review prescribed accounts (production, supplies, stock, input tax credit, tax payable/paid) and listed documents such as financial statements, trial balance and audit reports, but may not require creation of documents not mandated by law. Requests should be limited to legally required and relevant records and applied with proportionality to business nature to avoid mechanical or excessive demands. (AI Summary)

Declaration procedure for Nidhi companies tightened; new filing, membership and director fit and proper norms plus branch and deposit restrictions enforced.
Companies seeking declaration as a Nidhi must file the prescribed declaration form within a specified period, meet membership and net owned fund thresholds, and ensure each director satisfies a fit and proper standard excluding persons with specified criminal, insolvency, regulatory or mental capacity disqualifications and caps on concurrent Nidhi directorships/promoter roles. The Government must decide within a fixed timeline or approval is deemed, and non compliant companies are prohibited from accepting deposits or lending to members, with any such deposits treated as regulated deposits under the Act. (AI Summary)

SEZ reform to permit domestic transactions and equalisation duty, streamline debonding, and digitise customs for export competitiveness.
The document proposes revamping the SEZ Act to address post pandemic underutilisation and compliance burdens by removing or relaxing the Net Foreign Exchange requirement, simplifying de bonding to allow DTA occupation of vacant SEZ space, permitting DTA sales on a duty foregone or equalisation duty basis, allowing INR receipts for domestic service sales, authorising limited job work for DTA units, and integrating the SEZ online portal with ICEGATE, DGFT and GSTN to enable automated, faceless procedures and time bound approvals. (AI Summary)

Non-compliant GST invoice misuse enables wrongful input tax credit claims and triggers statutory penalties and criminal prosecution.
A non-compliant GST invoice or 'fake invoice' is an invoice issued without actual supply or reflecting a non-compliant supply, used to generate or transfer inadmissible input tax credit (ITC), facilitate clandestine supplies, divert goods, or effect circular trading via shell entities. Tax invoice issuance by registered persons is mandatory at or before time of supply showing prescribed particulars; availment of ITC requires a proper invoice and receipt of goods/services, and misuse attracts recovery of ITC with interest, penalties, registration cancellation and criminal prosecution under the CGST framework. (AI Summary)

Utmost good faith requires insured's full disclosure of material facts; failure to disclose may void insurance coverage and bar claims.
A contract of insurance rests on utmost good faith, imposing on the insured a solemn duty to make a true and full disclosure of all material facts asked for in the proposal. Suppression, false statements or omission of such facts undermines the insurer's confidence and may render the policy voidable. The insured bears the burden to disclose material information and the insurer is not obliged to investigate omissions with a previous insurer; the proposal form declaration that statements are true forms the basis of the contract. (AI Summary)

Adjudication under GST: procedural safeguards require exclusion of stay or appeal periods and recovery of unpaid self-assessed tax.
Section 75 prescribes procedural safeguards for GST adjudication: exclusion of stay and appeal periods when computing limitation, confinement of demands to show cause notice grounds and amounts, requirement for reasoned orders recording facts, mandatory payment of interest on short paid tax, a cap of three adjournments on request, deemed conclusion of proceedings if orders are not issued within statutory periods, recovery of unpaid self assessed tax under the recovery mechanism, and adjustment of interest and penalty where appellate forums modify tax. (AI Summary)

Prior inquiry requirement: assessors must conduct enquiry and offer show cause opportunity before issuing reassessment notices under section 148.
The amended reassessment procedure requires the Assessing Officer, upon information suggesting escapement of income, to obtain prior approval before conducting any enquiry, to serve a show cause notice disclosing the information and enquiry results and allow the assessee time to reply, to consider the reply and other material, and then to pass a reasoned order with prior approval within the prescribed period deciding whether to issue a notice under section 148; exceptions apply for specified search and requisition cases effective from the statute's commencement. (AI Summary)

Extension of limitation: excluded pandemic period paused running, restart grants a short remedial window to institute proceedings.
The Supreme Court excluded the period from 15 March 2020 to 28 February 2022 from computation of limitation for all judicial and quasi judicial proceedings, causing limitation to restart on 1 March 2022. If limitation would have expired during the excluded period, claimants are granted a remedial window of ninety days from the restart date to institute proceedings, except where a longer balance of limitation exists as of the restart date; the exclusion also applies to outer limits, termination windows and condonation thresholds in arbitration, commercial dispute and negotiable instrument regimes. (AI Summary)

e-Dispute Resolution Scheme enables electronic tax dispute resolution with electronic filing, hearings, and possible waiver of penalty and immunity.
The e-Dispute Resolution Scheme, 2022 creates an electronic dispute resolution process administered by a Dispute Resolution Committee for defined "specified orders," prescribing electronic filing in Form 34BC, eligibility conditions, examination, show cause procedure, electronic hearings, record calls to assessing officers, and decision outcomes including modification of variations, waiver of penalty and immunity from prosecution; modified orders preclude further reference or appeal, assessing officers give effect to orders and issue demands, and proceedings are electronic, confidential and subject to termination for noncooperation or concealment. (AI Summary)

GST compliance: Accurate Input Tax Credit reporting and digital return scrutiny to secure proper IGST/SGST apportionment.
Mandatory e invoicing and computer assisted automated selection of returns have been introduced, with an operational focus on time bound scrutiny. Correct declaration of eligible and ineligible Input Tax Credit in specified GSTR 3B tables is essential for proper IGST/SGST apportionment; unreported or partially reported ineligible ITC must be regularised in the annual return or subsequent GSTR 3B filings. States have mandated BO system issuance of provisional attachment and restoration orders and limited detention of goods in transit for undervaluation, prescribing evidence collection and jurisdictional verification procedures. Portal enhancements support these compliance measures. (AI Summary)

Writ petition threshold requires exhaustion of alternate remedies; tax authority may probe undervalued property transactions before writ relief.
Writ relief under Article 226 should be confined to matters without effective alternate remedies or compelling reasons; routine tax inquiries into underreported consideration, related-party links, impounded deeds and circle-rate versus valuation discrepancies fall within the assessing officer's jurisdiction and should be met by replying to show cause notices rather than by seeking high court intervention. (AI Summary)

Taxation of cooperative societies: eligibility for income deductions under cooperative-specific provisions and GST/TDS compliance obligations.
Cooperative societies are taxable separate entities with income from interest, house property, business profits, capital gains and other sources, and may claim specified deductions notably under Section 80P for listed cooperative activities and for income from letting of godowns/warehouses; Section 80P is to be interpreted beneficially (e.g., CAP storage held to qualify). Societies may opt for the concessional regime under Section 115BAD subject to specified disallowances and irrevocable election; Section 115JC prescribes Alternate Minimum Tax. Filing in Form ITR-5, TDS obligations, and GST registration/applicability are mandatory compliance considerations. (AI Summary)

Adjudication under GST: rules for fraud, willful misstatement or suppression triggering tax demand and penalty options.
Section 74 enables adjudication and recovery where tax is unpaid, short paid, erroneously refunded or input tax credit wrongly availed or utilised by reason of fraud, willful misstatement or suppression of facts. The proper officer must serve an electronic show cause notice after forming belief of such conduct; notice timing and order time limit are prescribed (notice at least six months prior and order within five years from the annual return due date or erroneous refund). Concessionary voluntary payments (15%, 25%, 50% penalty bands) can terminate proceedings; seizure/confiscation proceedings have been separated by amendment. (AI Summary)