Reasoned and speaking appellate GST orders must address material grounds of appeal and cited precedents; merely confirming an ex parte demand for lack of satisfactory evidence fails to exercise appellate jurisdiction. Where original adjudication occurred ex parte and objections concerning notice, relied-upon documents, and hearing remain unresolved, remand for fresh original adjudication preserves the appellate remedy. Fresh proceedings require identification and access to relied-upon documents, a reasonable opportunity to respond, an effective personal hearing, and reasoned findings based on evidence. Non-participation without sufficient cause permits determination on the existing record, but not without reasons.

For export refunds under rule 89(4), net input tax credit, turnover of zero-rated supply and adjusted total turnover must correspond to the same relevant period. Export invoices for goods intended for export are issued before or at removal of goods; their value is included in zero-rated turnover where issued during that period, even if the goods are exported later, provided actual export is established. Refund cannot be denied solely because export occurred after the relevant period. An objection that certain input tax credit was inadmissible did not affect the sanctioned refund because the maximum computable refund remained higher than the amount claimed. The departmental appeal was dismissed.

Stay applications against recovery of disputed income-tax demand require a reasoned exercise of discretion based on factors relevant to granting or refusing interim protection. Rejection solely because an appeal is pending, no separate stay order exists, or the prescribed demand percentage has not been paid under an applicable circular is mechanical and insufficient. The decision-maker must record consideration of the merits relevant to the stay request. The rejection was set aside and remitted to the competent authority for fresh reasoned consideration within one month, without deciding the underlying tax dispute.

Review jurisdiction permits reliance on newly discovered evidence only where, despite due diligence, it was neither known nor capable of earlier production. Publicly available sale deeds and a Tribunal order did not meet that condition because they were accessible during the original proceedings and no due diligence was demonstrated. Seeking to reassess the factual explanation for an unexplained bank credit would amount to an impermissible rehearing rather than correction of an error apparent on the record. The review application was therefore dismissed.

Limitation computation treats an objection filed on the next working day as timely where the statutory final day falls on a Sunday. Under section 144C, a timely objection requires the Assessing Officer to await binding Dispute Resolution Panel directions before making a final assessment. Rejection of the objection as time-barred led to the final assessment being quashed, with the objection requiring merits-based consideration after hearing the assessee. Consequential penalty proceedings remain stayed until completion of that adjudication.

CBDT instructions treat recovery of 20% of disputed tax demand as the ordinary condition for stay pending a first appeal. Recovery above that level requires recorded reasons, including lack of prima facie sustainability of the taxpayer's case or exceptional circumstances. Where a stay order does not record reasons for exceeding the norm, retaining excess collections or adjusting refunds while the stay continues defeats the protection of the stay. Aggregate recoveries and refund adjustments must be verified, and amounts exceeding 20% must be refunded with applicable interest. The assessment and appellate merits remain open.

Limitation governing correction of TDS statements does not justify an employer's failure to file an original TDS statement or return; where no original filing exists, the correction-time-limit plea is inapplicable. An employer that deducts TDS acts as an agent for its collection and remittance and becomes an assessee in default if it neither deposits deducted tax nor files required returns. Recovery mechanisms, including a charge on the employer's assets, apply against the defaulting employer, while the employee must not suffer for that default. Filed statements require verification and employee grievances require redress.

DRP directions bind the final assessment order, but a patent computation omission may be rectified within the statutory period where the directions were reproduced but not implemented. An Indian subsidiary does not create a permanent establishment merely on facts previously found insufficient to establish one, so no business-profit attribution follows on that basis. Third-party cost reimbursements received without mark-up are not fees for included services unless the services are technical or consultancy services and make available the requisite technical knowledge or know-how under the India-USA DTAA. Corporate guarantee commission must be benchmarked on the taxpayer's facts; a fixed formula without examining the taxpayer's benchmarking is inappropriate.

Committee of Creditors' commercial wisdom permits replacement of a resolution professional, who has no vested right to remain in office, provided statutory and procedural requirements are met; the replacement was upheld. The professional must nevertheless act independently and consistently with the Code and Regulations. Professional fees depend on work performed and the creditors' acceptance of the applicable scale, while CIRP-expense reimbursement requires factual examination; both claims remain for NCLT adjudication. Adverse observations bearing on the former professional's reputation were expunged as unnecessary.

Registration scrutiny of charitable institutions under section 12AB is confined to the genuineness of activities and legal requirements relevant to their objects, rather than assessment-stage examination of income utilisation or payments to specified persons. Scholarships remitted in India in Indian currency to Indian students for overseas higher education constitute domestic application of income, not application outside India merely because studies occur abroad. Such scholarships remain within educational objects where no contrary material establishes otherwise. Concerns regarding scholarship-selection criteria alone do not displace this registration analysis.

Unexplained election expenditure based on a seized notebook requires proof that the document belongs to or is linked with the taxpayer and independent corroboration of its entries. A notebook recovered from separate commission-agent business premises, without the taxpayer's name, verification from named persons, or other correlation, does not by itself establish unexplained expenditure despite the statutory presumption for seized documents. Undated alleged campaign payments must be assessed in the year supported by campaign, polling, search, and entry-related facts; meeting-schedule dates do not establish the year of payment.

Supervisory permanent establishment under the India-Japan DTAA requires supervisory activities in India exceeding six months and connected with a qualifying building site, construction, installation or assembly project. The duration test applies project-wise, without aggregating employees' presence or duplicating overlapping days; absent these conditions, no PE or related income attribution arises. Profits from offshore supplies are not taxable in India where contracts, transfer of title, receipt of consideration and supply operations occur outside India, and Indian buyers import on a principal-to-principal basis. Cost-to-cost reimbursement of secondees' salary is not fees for technical services, and an erroneous tax-return disclosure cannot create taxability.

Section 43CA permits agreement-date stamp duty valuation for computing business profits on transfer of land or building held as stock-in-trade where the agreement fixing consideration precedes registration and part consideration is received otherwise than in cash on or before the agreement date. Receipt through RTGS satisfies the non-cash condition. Where the agreed consideration and sale terms remain unchanged until registration, profits from the sale are computed using the stamp duty value prevailing on the agreement date rather than the registration date.

Unaccounted quarry sales establish suppressed business transactions, but only the profit reasonably embedded in those sales is taxable; extraction, production and operating costs cannot be treated as income absent evidence of unexplained funding. Profit estimation must have a rational link to the taxpayer's own historical results and accounted-business profitability; an unverified external gross-profit margin cannot be substituted for net profit. The voluntarily offered profit rates were accepted, displacing the higher rate. Cash sales captured in seized data cannot be added separately where aggregate records, annual accounts and GST disclosures show they were already included in disclosed turnover; a further profit addition would duplicate the same sales.

Reassessment limitation must exclude the time, including any extension, allowed for a response to a notice under section 148A(b). Following that exclusion, reassessment steps issued within three years remain within the applicable limitation framework, and the Commissioner is the competent specified authority under section 151(i); approval from the Principal Chief Commissioner is unnecessary. An Indian associated enterprise providing support services does not constitute a dependent agent permanent establishment where its business model and material facts correspond to an earlier year in which no such PE existed. Consequently, no question of profit attribution arises.

Dependent-agent permanent establishment under Article 5(5)(i) of the India-Switzerland DTAA requires evidence that the Indian associated enterprise had, and habitually exercised, authority to negotiate or conclude contracts on behalf of the foreign enterprise. Group affiliation, dependency and arm's-length remuneration do not independently establish that status. Contemporaneous emails, approval matrices and supplier contracts indicated that Indian personnel communicated pre-approved terms, performed liaison, account-management and administrative functions, and escalated non-approved proposals overseas. Essential commercial approvals remained outside India. The Indian enterprise therefore did not constitute a dependent agent permanent establishment, making proposed profit attribution academic; the appeal was partly allowed.

Transfer-pricing comparability for software development services requires selection of companies that meet applicable functional filters and have sufficiently comparable operations. Prior acceptance of a comparable before the Transfer Pricing Officer does not prevent an assessee from contesting it before the DRP. Diversified software-service and product companies lacking segmental information, or earning product-related income through outsourced product development, may be excluded as functionally dissimilar. Brand value and scale may materially affect comparability, supporting exclusion of a large branded company; an onsite filter may also be applied where appropriate. For accurate arm's-length price determination, the DRP may entertain objections, apply a new lawful filter, and direct inclusion or exclusion of comparables.

Goodwill arising from the slump-sale acquisition of a going software business division qualifies as a depreciable intangible asset where the Business Transfer Agreement transfers the division's products, employees, licences, permits and assets. Consideration exceeding the net value of transferred assets and liabilities may represent goodwill and other intangible assets rather than unexplained expenditure, where it is recorded under the transfer agreement and not claimed as revenue expenditure. Tax deduction at source on transfer of immovable property does not apply where the transferred business assets comprise computer systems and intangible assets, with no land, building or part of a building transferred. Depreciation and deletion of the related disallowance and addition were sustained.

Article 12(4) of the India-China DTAA treats managerial, technical or consultancy services as fees for technical services only where a resident of one Contracting State renders them in the other Contracting State. Management and consultancy services supplied from China to an Indian associated enterprise through email, conference calls and video conferencing therefore fail the territorial condition where they are not physically rendered in India. The related fees are not taxable as fees for technical services under Article 12(4), and the additions for the relevant assessment years were set aside.

Payment to an agreement holder to extinguish enforceable specific-performance rights arising from an agreement for sale qualifies as expenditure incurred wholly and exclusively in connection with a property transfer. Where the payment clears the holder's claim, improves the transferor's title and enables the sale, it is deductible when computing capital gains under section 48. The Tribunal treated the payment as analogous to expenditure incurred to remove existing rights that obstruct a transfer, deleted the related capital-gains addition, and allowed the appeal.