https://www.taxtmi.com/caselaws?id=185598 Penalty under Sections 76, 77 and 78 of the Finance Act, 1994 was considered for non-registration, non-payment of service tax and non-filing of returns, where the tax liability had already been discharged with interest. The material point was whether procedural defaults still justified penalty despite subsequent compliance; the explanation accepted was ignorance of law, payment from the assessee's own pocket, and absence of wilful negligence. As no lower-authority finding justified penalty in those circumstances, the commentary states that the power to impose penalty is discretionary and not automatic, so penalty was not warranted and was set aside in favour of the assessee. en-us Wed, 14 Feb 2007 00:00:00 +0530 Sat, 20 Aug 2016 17:37:21 +0530 TaxTMI RSS Generator https://www.taxtmi.com/caselaws?id=185598 Penalty under Sections 76, 77 and 78 of the Finance Act, 1994 was considered for non-registration, non-payment of service tax and non-filing of returns, where the tax liability had already been discharged with interest. The material point was whether procedural defaults still justified penalty despite subsequent compliance; the explanation accepted was ignorance of law, payment from the assessee's own pocket, and absence of wilful negligence. As no lower-authority finding justified penalty in those circumstances, the commentary states that the power to impose penalty is discretionary and not automatic, so penalty was not warranted and was set aside in favour of the assessee. Case-Laws Service Tax Wed, 14 Feb 2007 00:00:00 +0530 https://www.taxtmi.com/caselaws?id=185598