Electronic credit already recovered from a taxpayer's electronic credit ledger may be adjusted against the mandatory GST appellate pre-deposit where the recovered balance exceeds the required pre-deposit and the taxpayer seeks adjustment rather than refund. On that basis, dismissal of the GST appeal for non-payment of pre-deposit was quashed and the appeal restored for merits determination. The adjustment was permitted on the particular facts, with all merits contentions left open and without precedential effect.

Section 129(3)'s seven-day deadline for issuing notice after detention of goods and conveyance under GST is mandatory. The timeline limits coercive detention and seizure powers, protects against arbitrary or prolonged detention, and requires strict compliance because the provision uses "shall" and affects taxpayer rights. A delay of even one day in issuing the notice vitiates the resulting detention and penalty proceedings. Penalty orders issued or affirmed despite breach of this timeline are liable to be set aside, without preventing other proceedings permissible under the Act. Deposited penalty may be released following due verification.

Parallel GST adjudication under Sections 73 and 74 for the same financial period was treated as incongruous once adjudication under Section 73 had concluded; the show cause notice, adjudication order and summary order under Section 74 were quashed. The ex parte Section 73 adjudication was also quashed and restored for fresh consideration because the taxpayer asserted that exemption documents and a reply could substantiate its position on the alleged mismatch or erroneous declaration. Reconsideration must occur after receiving the taxpayer's reply and supporting documents, while the merits of the exemption claim remain open.

Section 6(2)(b) of the CGST Act bars a Central Tax proper officer from initiating proceedings on a subject matter already taken up by a State GST proper officer. Subsequent Central Tax show-cause and adjudication proceedings on the same matter were therefore quashed. For street-light works contracts, the claimed exemption depended on demonstrating that the value of goods supplied remained below the prescribed proportion of the contract value. State Tax adjudication orders and consequential garnishee notices were quashed to permit responses and supporting material, subject to deposit of 10% of the tax demand; the exemption merits remain open.

Input tax credit of a registered purchaser cannot ordinarily be denied merely because the supplier later becomes non-existent or defaults, where the purchaser holds valid registration, invoices, banking-channel payment evidence and filed returns, unless fraud or collusion is established. Documentary proof of actual receipt of goods and absence of prima facie collusion ordinarily make custodial interrogation unnecessary. Arrest for cognizable CGST offences requires the Commissioner's recorded reasons to believe, based on material satisfying statutory conditions rather than suspicion alone. Anticipatory bail in alleged wrongful input tax credit availment was granted subject to cooperation, document production and other safeguards.

For anticipatory bail, the expression "jurisdictional Court" includes both the High Court and the Court of Session, allowing applicants to choose either forum rather than requiring an approach to the Principal Sessions Court. In alleged GST evasion, custodial interrogation was not considered necessary where the maximum punishment was five years, the offences were compoundable, documentary and digital evidence was substantially secured by authorities, and the applicants had business roots and agreed to cooperate. Anticipatory bail was granted subject to conditions including deposit, passport surrender, reporting requirements, bonds, and continued cooperation with the investigation.

GST liability arising from works contracts spanning the pre-GST and GST regimes must be determined under the applicable statute, while reimbursement of any incremental GST burden depends on the contractor-employer contract. Contractual directions may govern work calculation, representations and GST adjustment, but cannot alter statutory assessment, recovery, interest, penalty, return limitations or enforcement by tax authorities. Assessment orders may be challenged through appropriate proceedings, with the time spent pursuing writ petitions excluded when calculating limitation.

Rule 90(2) limits scrutiny of a GST refund application to its completeness under Rule 89(2), (3) and (4); it does not permit a deficiency memo to decide merits. Objections concerning the correct refund category, required statutory statements, adequacy of foreign-remittance evidence, or limitation require substantive examination by the competent authority. An Advice of Foreign Inward Remittance cannot be rejected solely by its label without assessing whether its contents meet the purpose of a Bank Realisation Certificate or FIRC. Deficiency memos on those grounds were unsustainable, and refiled applications had to be accepted for merits consideration after the applicable opportunity.

Input tax credit mismatches between Forms GSTR-3B and GSTR-2A may support tax determination under section 73, but do not by themselves justify section 74 proceedings or penalties. Section 74 requires clear evidence connecting wrongful credit availment with fraud, wilful misstatement, or suppression of facts intended to evade tax; merely reciting those terms is insufficient. Payment of tax and interest before notice, including after verification, falls within section 73(5) where no intent to evade is established. A supplier's default cannot automatically be attributed to the recipient as suppression.

Section 74 penalties for excess input tax credit and irregular transitional credit require positive material proving fraud, wilful misstatement, or suppression with intent to evade tax; audit mismatches, record-based discrepancies, and mechanical allegations are insufficient. Where returns and credit declarations are available on the departmental portal and tax and interest are paid before a show cause notice without deliberate evasion, the payments fall within Section 73(5) read with Section 73(8). On those principles, the Section 74 penalties were deleted, and the pre-notice tax and interest payments were treated as voluntary payments. Departmental hierarchy alone also does not establish a real likelihood of institutional bias in statutory appellate proceedings.

Wrongful treatment of an individual as a company's Principal Officer can undermine criminal prosecution for delayed deposit of tax deducted at source when the prosecution is founded on an incorrect assertion that the individual was a director. The show-cause notice, designation order, sanction and complaint must rest on accurate corporate status. Where the Department accepts that the accused was never a director, vicarious liability cannot be sustained on that premise; the prosecution was quashed on its particular facts without precedential effect.

Clean-slate protection applies where a corporate debtor is sold as a going concern in liquidation: past liabilities and related investigations are extinguished, preventing an alleged past interest cessation from being imposed on the purchaser. Reassessment cannot rest on a presumption that unpaid interest was deducted when accounts and the taxpayer's reply showed otherwise. The same alleged cessation from one transaction cannot be taxed repeatedly across assessment years. Failure to address the clean-slate defence and binding precedents rendered the reassessment notice and section 148A(3) order for AY 2021-22 unsustainable and quashed.

Section 13(1)(b)'s restriction on trusts benefiting a particular religious community applies when exemption under section 11 is considered, rather than at the section 12A registration stage. A trust whose objects are largely charitable and directed to the public at large is not disqualified merely because its objects include services to pilgrims and religious places. Where the trust is not established wholly for a particular religious community, its application for approval under section 80G(5) requires fresh consideration after verification and an opportunity of hearing. No substantial question of law arose from the Tribunal's direction for such reconsideration.

Section 92CA confines the Transfer Pricing Officer's role to computing the arm's length price of a specific international transaction referred by the Assessing Officer. It does not authorise determination of a permanent establishment under the India-Singapore DTAA, taxability of profits, or attribution of business profits. A transfer-pricing reference must identify the relevant international transaction and cannot replace the Assessing Officer's independent examination required by remand directions. An assessment based solely on Transfer Pricing Officer findings on permanent establishment and profit taxability lacks a valid jurisdictional basis.

Functional comparability under TNMM for licence fees paid by a limited-risk distributor of licensed film and television content turns on functions, assets, risks, contractual terms and reliable financial data, rather than product similarity alone. Software and hardware distributors may therefore be valid comparables despite distributing different products. A revenue split under the Other Method requires comparable uncontrolled transactions, reliable market evidence or another objective economic basis to quantify contributions; allocated functional weightages alone cannot establish an arm's length price.

Interest included in a foreign arbitral award, once the award is enforced as a court decree, assumes the character of a judgment debt rather than "interest" under the Income-tax Act. The interest component, although labelled as interest in the award, was treated as part of the decretal damages and therefore outside the scope of taxable interest income in India. The related tax addition was deleted and the appeal succeeded.

Penalty proceedings under section 271D that are not initiated during an assessment or other proceeding fall outside the first alternative limitation period in section 275(1)(c). In that situation, the show-cause notice constitutes the latest point at which action to impose the penalty is regarded as initiated. The penalty order must therefore be made within six months from the end of the month in which that notice is issued. An order made after that deadline is time-barred and cannot sustain the penalty.

Intra-group technical and IT services are priced using a 10% cost mark-up, after crediting recoveries, because Safe Harbour margins did not apply for the relevant year. Actuarially measured pension and other employee-benefit liabilities arising from past service are accrued liabilities, while privilege-leave encashment remains deductible only on actual payment. Exempt-income expenditure requires limited recomputation excluding interest, considering only income-yielding investments, and capped at exempt income. Banking securities may be valued under a consistently followed recognised method reflecting real income; interest on non-performing advances or investments is not taxed where recovery is uncertain under prudential norms. Bad-debt prov.....

Section 167B's maximum marginal rate is inapplicable to income of a public charitable association assessed as an Association of Persons. Income from charitable activity for the public at large is to be computed at the normal tax rate applicable to an Association of Persons, rather than at the maximum marginal rate. Comparable treatment applies to registered trusts undertaking public charitable activity.

Rental income from let-out business premises cannot be increased by relying on rent from a commercial property at a different location without credible evidence that comparable local premises command higher rent; the estimated addition was deleted. Salary paid to a family member remains allowable where business services were rendered, payments were consistent, and the recipient offered the income to tax; the disallowance was deleted. Interest on unsecured business borrowings may exceed secured bank-loan rates where flexibility, short-term repayment terms, ancillary borrowing costs and commercial expediency establish that the rate is reasonable; the interest disallowance was deleted.