Tobacco moved to 40% GST with MRP-based valuation and GST returns now auto-compute interest and liabilities.
The GST regime was changed effective 1 February 2026 to impose a uniform 40% GST on most tobacco products with MRP/RSP-based valuation, withdrawal of compensation cess, and preservation of additional excise and health/security cesses; GSTN and CBIC require strict RSP-based reporting in e Invoice, e Way Bill and returns. Concurrently, GSTR-3B was enhanced from January 2026 to include auto-computed interest crediting Electronic Cash Ledger balances, system-populated tax liability breakup from GSTR-1/IFF entries, and flexible ITC utilisation rules. (AI Summary)

India's competition framework targets digital and traditional monopolies through merger control, abuse-of-dominance enforcement, and platform neutrality.
The Competition Commission of India uses enforcement, merger control and advocacy to prevent dominance turning into anti competitive conduct, employing tools such as investigations into predatory pricing, exclusive agreements, tying and bundling, refusal to deal, discriminatory pricing, cartel detection with dawn raids and leniency, and expanded merger scrutiny covering horizontal and vertical effects, innovation markets, deal value thresholds, and minority control-while prioritising platform neutrality, algorithmic transparency, market studies, and remedies to enhance contestability in digital and traditional sectors. (AI Summary)

India's indirect tax reforms create temporary appellate powers and extend customs jurisdiction for Indian flagged fishing vessels.
The Finance Bill, 2026 authorises temporary designation of an existing Authority or Tribunal to exercise the National Appellate Authority for Advance Ruling powers under a new sub section of Section 101A CGST Act, effective 1 April 2026, while excluding certain procedural subsections where a Tribunal is empowered. It inserts Section 56A to extend Customs Act jurisdiction for Indian flagged fishing vessels in the EEZ and high seas, prescribes duty and export treatments for marine harvests, recharacterises penalties under Section 28(6), extends advance rulings validity to five years, and simplifies warehousing transfers, provisional refunds and post sale discount and intermediary place of supply rules. (AI Summary)

Goods and Services Tax: high courts stress considering GSTR records, upholding natural justice, and remanding for fresh hearings.
Three high court rulings under GST emphasize mandatory consideration of GSTR 3B and GSTR 9 records before adverse adjudication, strict observance of natural justice and effective communication of show cause notices to taxpayers, and permissive condonation of delay where lack of timely representation prevented filing; each case resulted in quashing or setting aside of prior orders and remand for fresh decision with opportunity of hearing. (AI Summary)

Goods and Services Tax: statutory bar stops duplicate proceedings; invoke coordination and present prior notices to the later authority.
A statutory prohibition prevents concurrent GST proceedings by multiple officers over the same subject matter and assessment period; taxpayers faced with duplicate notices may invoke this rule to require later-initiating authorities to cease action. Practical steps: confirm identical subject matter and period, identify the first-acting authority, and provide documentary proof so the later authority refrains from parallel proceedings. (AI Summary)

Goods and Services Tax adjudications are often quashed due to poor legal updating and inconsistent departmental decision-making.
The article criticises recurring GST adjudication orders that are later quashed, attributing failures to inadequate legal updating, institutional pressure to confirm demands, and inconsistent outcomes across the three-tier departmental adjudicatory structure. It summarizes three judicial decisions illustrating quashed orders, deposit or refund directions, and restoration of registration where no liability existed, and argues these trends waste taxpayer resources and reflect the need for improved legal training, adherence to precedents and internal quality controls. (AI Summary)

Budget changes tighten GST discount valuation, link credit notes to ITC reversal, adjust refund and appellate and place-of-supply rules.
Post-supply discounts will be excluded from taxable value only if the supplier issues a credit note and the recipient reverses attributable input tax credit under Section 34; Section 34(1) is amended to expressly permit issuance of credit notes for such discounts. Section 54 is amended to allow provisional refund of specified unutilised input tax credit and to exempt export-with-tax refund claims from the Rs.1,000 minimum threshold. A temporary empowerment under Section 101A permits existing authorities or tribunals to hear designated appeals until the National Appellate Authority is constituted. Section 13(8)(b) of the IGST Act excluding intermediary services as a place of supply is omitted. (AI Summary)

Supreme Court practice: require speaking orders to settle law and avoid non-speaking dismissals that create uncertainty.
A plea that the Supreme Court adopt and consistently issue speaking orders rather than summary or non-speaking orders on important multi statute legal questions, citing three appeals (Deloitte Haskins And Sells LLP; Kalpesh Mehta; Udayan Sen) that arose from a common NCLT/NCLAT judgment and were disposed without substantive reasoning, thereby impeding their value as precedent and causing procedural inefficiency. (AI Summary)

Wrongful ITC penalties require proof of retained benefit, instigation, utilisation, and revenue loss rather than mere transactional participation.
Section 122(1A) is presented as a limited, derivative mechanism requiring a proven Section 122(1) offence, retention of benefit from specified transactions, and proof that the transaction was undertaken at the person's instance to enhance gains. In circular bill-trading arrangements, liability is argued to rest on the controlling beneficiary who avails and utilises wrongful ITC, rather than on conduit participants lacking control or benefit. Penal action requires evidence of actual supply, ITC utilisation, revenue deprivation, and a demonstrable nexus between the person and the contravention. (AI Summary)

GST assessment and demand orders face repeated quashing, highlighting systemic procedural and compliance weaknesses affecting small taxpayers.
Repeated judicial intervention has resulted in the quashing of GST assessment and demand orders, evidencing a pattern of procedural defects and duplicated demands that disproportionately burden small and remote taxpayers who cannot readily pursue writ remedies for modest demands. (AI Summary)

GST adjudication demand exceeding show-cause notice and imposed without confronting adverse material violates natural justice and is unsustainable.
GST adjudication imposing a demand beyond the show cause notice and without confronting adverse material or affording a meaningful opportunity to be heard constitutes jurisdictional error and a violation of natural justice, vitiating the order and making remand useless where the order is wholly laconic. (AI Summary)

GST appeals filed electronically with portal-uploaded orders are valid; hard-copy or certified-copy formalities cannot bar admissibility.
Electronic filing in FORM GST APL-01 with provisional acknowledgement and upload of the impugned order on the GST portal satisfies Rule 108(1) and Section 107(5) requirements; absent a Commissioner's notification mandating manual filing, rejection for non-submission of a hard copy is unsustainable. The amended Rule 108 dispenses with the certified-copy obligation where the order is portal-uploaded, and timely electronic filing with requisite pre-deposit should be processed to final acknowledgement and adjudication on merits after opportunity of hearing. (AI Summary)

Goods and Services Tax: taxpayers often bear the burden when tax officers err; administrative accountability is needed.
Taxpayers frequently bear financial consequences for tax officer errors when duplicative or legally unsustainable demands are raised; courts may quash such second orders but often decline to impose costs or censure officials. The author recommends that taxpayers challenge unsustainable demands, that CBIC perform root-cause analysis where officer orders are quashed, and that adverse High Court orders be forwarded to review authorities to prompt internal accountability and prevent recurrence. (AI Summary)

EOU job work QPRs can show misleading negative NFE when FOC imports are recorded at BOE valuation instead of actual forex flows.
EOU job work units often show negative Net Foreign Exchange in QPRs because customs Bill of Entry valuations for free-of-cost imports are recorded as import values while exports reflect only job work fees. NFE should measure actual forex movement: treat job work charges as forex inflow and FOC imports as zero forex outflow where no remittance occurred. Units must keep contractual, BOE, bank, and invoice documentation to support QPR reporting and may need to clarify past reports with the Development Commissioner to reconcile BOE valuation with actual forex flows. (AI Summary)

Construction tender turnover discrepancies require forensic audit to verify true GST taxable supplies before confirming tax liability.
A sharp divergence between GSTR-9 and bank receipts ( Rs. 27.9 crores) and ITR-declared turnover ( Rs. 166.9 crores) necessitates forensic examination before treating ITR figures as taxable turnover. The GST audit wing must audit and reconcile physical and electronic books, passwords and cash records to establish actual supplies for the disputed periods. Tax liability should be determined on the audited, corroborated turnover rather than on unverified ITR entries, with cooperation and specified provisional compliance required during reassessment. (AI Summary)

Advance Authorizations: Once DGFT issues EODC for regularised shortfalls, Customs cannot challenge export obligation fulfilment or deny benefits.
Once DGFT accepts regularisation of export shortfalls and issues an Export Obligation Discharge Certificate, the EODC constitutes conclusive proof of export obligation fulfilment and redeems the Advance Authorization; Customs authorities lack jurisdiction to re-open or dispute the DGFT's determination, and inconsistent positions by separate government wings on the same Foreign Trade Policy determination are impermissible. (AI Summary)

Audit sampling uses selected-item testing to form conclusions about entire populations while managing sampling risk.
Audit Sampling applies audit procedures to less than 100% of items to obtain evidence about selected items and form conclusions about the whole population. The framework covers sample design, population definition, stratification, sample size and risk, tolerable and expected error, selection techniques, evaluation of results, error analysis, projection of errors and reassessment of sampling risk. Statistical sampling uses probability methods to quantify sampling risk and support inference; non statistical sampling relies on auditor judgment and does not yield statistically generalisable conclusions. (AI Summary)

GST appeals: challenge 2024-25 orders issued without jurisdiction, proper service, timing, or correct pre deposit and liability rules.
Appeals for orders from financial year 2024-25 onward are warranted where orders are issued under obsolete assessment provisions or without jurisdiction, administrative instructions are ignored, single SCNs cover multiple years except fraud, original orders are passed before the minimum statutory period, portal only service or denial of personal hearing occurred, pre deposit was wrongly required from cash ledger, head mismatch demands were raised despite tax payment, buyer liability was asserted despite bank channel payment, or delay condonation was improperly denied. (AI Summary)

Duty drawback requires a Bank Realisation Certificate; missing it can trigger IEC blocking, shipment detention, and refund obligations.
Duty drawback is a conditional export benefit that requires the Bank Realisation Certificate (BRC) as proof of foreign exchange receipt; absence or late submission of the BRC can prompt Customs enforcement including IEC blocking, inter-port shipment detention, refund demands, and commercial losses. Exporters should link shipping bills to payment timelines, obtain and submit BRCs immediately upon receipt, respond to Customs notices within 15 days, and prioritise automation so BRCs feed into the Customs EDI to prevent escalation. (AI Summary)

Customs tariff simplification and duty relief for critical sectors, GST place-of-supply change for intermediaries, and export refund easing.
Customs tariff simplification moves many exemptions into the tariff, creates new tariff lines, extends customs law beyond territorial waters for fishing, fixes advance rulings at five years, relaxes warehouse transfer permissions, introduces monthly deferred duty payments and a new importer class, reduces personal import duty to 10%, and provides targeted duty relief for critical minerals, EVs, semiconductors and other strategic sectors while allowing some exemptions to lapse to balance revenue. (AI Summary)