https://www.taxtmi.com/caselaws?id=786091 Extended limitation for demanding central excise duty on handling charges requires established suppression, misstatement, misdeclaration or collusion; routine audit detection alone does not meet that threshold. Central Excise Officers must scrutinise returns and undertake best-judgment assessment where returns are incorrect or incomplete. Where an assessee regularly filed returns and adopted a plausible alternate interpretation, the absence of evidence of deliberate concealment prevents invocation of the extended period. The demand notice is therefore time-barred, and consequential orders founded on it are set aside. en-us Wed, 04 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0530 Fri, 06 Feb 2026 09:25:38 +0530 TaxTMI RSS Generator https://www.taxtmi.com/caselaws?id=786091 Extended limitation for demanding central excise duty on handling charges requires established suppression, misstatement, misdeclaration or collusion; routine audit detection alone does not meet that threshold. Central Excise Officers must scrutinise returns and undertake best-judgment assessment where returns are incorrect or incomplete. Where an assessee regularly filed returns and adopted a plausible alternate interpretation, the absence of evidence of deliberate concealment prevents invocation of the extended period. The demand notice is therefore time-barred, and consequential orders founded on it are set aside. Case-Laws Central Excise Wed, 04 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0530 https://www.taxtmi.com/caselaws?id=786091