Compounding assessment eligibility is not defeated by earlier inter-State purchases absent a statutory disqualification.

Mere inter-State purchases in earlier years do not, by themselves, disqualify a dealer from compounding assessment under the Tamil Nadu Value Added Tax Act, 2006, where the statute does not impose such a bar and the relevant turnover conditions are otherwise satisfied. Applying that principle, the rejection of the dealer's claim for assessment under Section 3(4) for the assessment year 2009-10 was found unsustainable. The impugned revisional assessment order was set aside and the matter remitted for fresh consideration in light of the governing legal position.

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Issues: Whether a dealer who had effected inter-State purchases in earlier years could be denied the benefit of compounding assessment under the Tamil Nadu Value Added Tax Act, 2006 for the assessment year 2009-10, and whether the revisional assessment order was liable to be set aside.

Analysis: The earlier decision relied upon held that, in the absence of a statutory provision disentitling a dealer from compounding merely because of inter-State purchases in previous years, such purchases by themselves do not defeat the claim for assessment under Section 3(4) of the Tamil Nadu Value Added Tax Act, 2006, so long as the turnover conditions are satisfied. The same reasoning was applied to the present facts, and the impugned order rejecting the petitioner's claim was found unsustainable. The matter was therefore remitted for fresh consideration in the light of the governing principle.

Conclusion: The denial of the benefit of compounding assessment on the sole ground of earlier inter-State purchases was held to be unsustainable, and the impugned order was set aside with a direction for fresh decision.

Ratio Decidendi: Mere inter-State purchases in earlier years do not, by themselves, disqualify a dealer from compounding assessment where the statute does not impose such a bar and the relevant turnover requirements are otherwise satisfied.

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