Tax-refund adjustment constitutes coercive recovery and cannot be used against demands protected by a subsisting unconditional stay. Refunds adjusted against demands for Assessment Years 2016-17 to 2018-19, which were treated as non-collectible, must be reversed with statutory interest. While a stay application remains pending, recovery through refund adjustment is barred; for the Assessment Year 2021-22 demand, retention is limited to 20% under recovery guidelines, with excess adjustment refunded and the balance demand stayed pending appeal.

Standing to challenge a search and seizure authorisation directed at a company belongs to the affected company. An additional director does not obtain a personal cause of action merely by holding that office and therefore cannot invoke writ jurisdiction to contest the authorisation. Any grievance concerning the legality of the search or its authorisation must be pursued by the company.

Sufficient cause for condoning a prolonged delay in re-presenting tax appeals requires a reasonable, plausible and bona fide explanation covering the entire period of delay. General reliance on administrative workload, simultaneous appeals, voluminous records and procedural requirements does not explain sustained inaction. Government departments remain subject to limitation rules and cannot obtain condonation merely because of bureaucratic processes. Consistent treatment is required where delayed appeals arising from the same appellate order have previously not been entertained. Condonation of the Revenue's delay was declined in favour of the assessee.

Wrongful PAN linkage to bank accounts and cash transactions belonging to a company removed the factual basis for attributing the related income to an individual taxpayer. Assessment under best-judgment and faceless-assessment provisions, consequential penalty proceedings, tax demands, and revision could not stand without that attribution. The taxpayer bore no tax or penalty liability for the company's transactions; the assessment, penalties, demands, and revisional action were set aside.

Reassessment of a disclosed long-term capital loss from the sale of immovable property cannot rest solely on reconsideration of material examined during the original scrutiny assessment. Where sale consideration, capital-gain computation, purchase deeds, co-owners' shares and land records were produced and accepted, reopening requires fresh tangible material indicating escaped income. Reopening on the same transactions without such material constitutes a change of opinion and invalidates the reassessment notice and order.

Reassessment under Sections 148 and 148A requires a valid basis to conclude that income has escaped assessment. Disclosure of cryptocurrency sales, purchases, opening and closing stock, and resulting income in the return, reply and reconciliation statement precludes a finding of non-disclosure merely because the return form lacks a separate cryptocurrency reporting head. Because the premise of undisclosed Bitcoin transactions was factually incorrect, the Section 148 notice and Section 148A(d) order were quashed.

Reassessment requires material indicating that income chargeable to tax escaped assessment in the specific assessment year proposed for reopening. Unsecured loans had been obtained and disclosed in the preceding year, while the relevant year's ledger reflected only interest expenditure. The loan amounts cited in the reopening material also did not match the recorded interest amount. Because the alleged loan transactions did not pertain to the year reopened, the reassessment lacked a sustainable factual basis and was unsustainable.

Refund of payments made by a partnership firm towards an individual partner's outstanding income-tax demand is unavailable where fixed deposits and a cheque were voluntarily tendered. A bank attachment, without more, does not establish coercive recovery. Where the revenue authorities were not informed of an alleged change from proprietorship to partnership when payment was made, departmental action is not rendered illegal, erroneous, or arbitrary. Any claim arising from the firm's payment of a partner's tax liability remains an inter se dispute between the partners rather than a basis for refund from the tax department.

Section 107 of the CGST Act confines an appellate authority's power to condone delay to the prescribed outer limit; equitable considerations or constitutional relief in another proceeding cannot enlarge that statutory jurisdiction. Restoration of cancelled registrations pursuant to appellate orders may render a departmental challenge infructuous where undoing the restoration would disturb intervening business and compliance actions, leaving no effective relief. The statutory appeal against cancellation remains independent of revocation under Rule 23: expiry of the portal-based revocation period does not extinguish the right to pursue an appeal.

Section 107 confines an appellate authority's power to condone delay to the statutory outer limit; equitable considerations and constitutional relief under Article 226 cannot enlarge that jurisdiction. Where registration cancellation orders have been implemented through restoration of registration and taxpayers have resumed business and compliance, a departmental challenge may become academic because annulment would disrupt intervening transactions. The appeal remedy under Section 107 operates independently of the revocation procedure under Rule 23, so inability to file a revocation application after the prescribed period does not extinguish the right to challenge cancellation in appeal. Restored registrations and their consequential legal effects remain undisturbed.

Customised road restoration requested by a business entity to facilitate a pipeline project constitutes consideration for a taxable service, rather than a sovereign public-road function or unilateral compensation. Non-supply and exemption treatment are unavailable, including where exemptions exclude Government or local-authority services supplied to business entities. The recipient bears GST under reverse charge where no forward-charge tax payment is established; revenue neutrality or alleged double taxation does not support a refund claim. Electronic portal-based proceedings remain valid without a physical DIN where the notice adequately states the factual and legal basis and the recipient suffers no prejudice, preserving the rejection of refund relief.

GST transit requirements require goods in movement to be accompanied by prescribed documents, including a tax invoice and a valid e-way bill. Manual invoices produced more than three months after interception, without electronic or contemporaneous corroboration, do not establish lawful inward supply, retrospectively cure undocumented movement, or rebut the presumption of intent to evade tax. Where an amount is recovered for release of the same goods in detention proceedings, it must be adjusted against the demand arising from the identical goods and cause of action, as parallel proceedings for that identical cause cannot be maintained.

Unaccounted goods detected during a survey must be treated as supplies for tax determination under Sections 73 or 74, pursuant to the record-keeping and deemed-supply framework in Section 35. Excess or unaccounted stock found at business premises cannot be taken directly to confiscation proceedings under Section 130(2), including consequential fine and penalty. Tax liability must instead be determined through the prescribed statutory procedure.

Assignment of leasehold rights in a GIDC plot and building for consideration is treated as a transfer of benefits arising from immovable property, rather than a taxable supply. It falls outside the relevant GST supply provisions and cannot be classified as other miscellaneous services for rate-notification purposes; GST is therefore not chargeable. Delayed invoicing or tax payment, without deliberate non-disclosure intended to evade tax, does not establish suppression. Where non-taxability rests on a plausible, bona fide view supported by binding interpretation, extended-period proceedings and related penalties under Section 74 are unwarranted.

GST demand must rest on the statutory basis stated in the show-cause notice; a demand alleging an IGST mismatch cannot be confirmed instead on an unalleged input tax credit condition. Payment of GST under CGST and SGST heads rather than the IGST head because of a clerical error does not constitute unpaid or short-paid tax where the corresponding amount has already been deposited. Excess CGST and SGST amounts available in the electronic credit ledger must be set off against the IGST liability. Recovery under section 73 is therefore confined to any verified net deficit remaining after set-off, together with applicable interest.

Tax determinations under Section 74 cannot be retained once fraud, wilful misstatement, collusion and suppression are found absent and that provision is inapplicable. Potential applicability of the limitation period under Section 73 does not validate a demand issued and confirmed under Section 74. Penalty under Section 73(9) cannot be substituted at the appellate stage where the show-cause notice proposed penalty only under Section 74(1), because doing so exceeds the scope of the notice. Accordingly, both the tax demand under the inapplicable provision and the substituted penalty are unsustainable.

Wilful suppression must be supported by specific facts identifying suppressed material, the required disclosure, and the prescribed return, statement, report, or document. Failure to reverse input tax credit because suppliers were not paid within the stipulated period, without more, does not establish suppression or justify penalty under Section 74(1). Audit detection alone cannot prove wilful suppression, and Revenue bears that burden. Grounds absent from the show cause notice cannot be added at the second appellate stage. On these principles, the Section 74(1) penalty was set aside in favour of the assessee.

Input tax credit on invoices absent from GSTR-2A was denied where the recipient admitted that suppliers had not uploaded the invoices and failed to establish that suppliers paid the tax, as required under the pre-amendment matching and reversal scheme. Interest on sustained ineligible credit remained recoverable as mandatory and incidental to reversal, even though not expressly proposed in the show-cause notice; however, it must be recomputed invoice-wise from availment until reversal or payment under the statutory mechanism. Separate interest based solely on credit exceeding the Rule 36(4) provisional-credit limit was deleted because it was not contemplated by the show-cause notice and fell outside the original proceedings.

Section 54(3)(ii) permits an inverted-duty refund where eligible input tax credit accumulates because inputs bear a higher tax rate than output supplies. Packing materials used in supplying packaged tea qualify as inputs when used in the course or furtherance of business; their higher rate, compared with the rate on packaged tea, can support refund eligibility even where bulk tea and packaged tea attract the same rate. Circulars addressing rate reductions on the same goods over time or supplies under concessional notifications do not apply where neither circumstance exists. Executive circulars cannot restrict a statutory refund entitlement outside their stated scope.

Unaccounted goods found at registered business premises must be addressed through the tax-determination mechanism. Section 35(1) requires true and correct accounts, while section 35(6) treats unaccounted goods or services as deemed supplies subject to tax determination under sections 73 or 74. Direct confiscation under section 130(2), including consequential tax, penalty and fine, is therefore unsustainable on that basis.