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By: - Raj Jaggi
Inverted-duty refund eligibility requires examination of all eligible inputs contributing to accumulated input tax credit, not merely the tax rate on the principal commodity. Packaging materials used to market packaged tea may be inputs where used in the course or furtherance of business. Matching tax rates on bulk and packaged tea do not exclude refund eligibility where higher-taxed packaging causes accumulation, subject to input tax credit admissibility, Rule 89(5) computation, and supporting records.
By: - Dr. Sanjiv Agarwal
GST prosecution covers supplies without invoices, invoices without actual supply, fraudulent input tax credit, wrongful refunds, and collection of tax without timely remittance. Imprisonment and fine vary according to the value of evaded tax, wrongful credit, or refund, with enhanced punishment for repeat convictions and an ordinarily applicable minimum imprisonment term. Certain obstruction, evidence-tampering, and information-related offences were decriminalised. Specified offences may be compounded on payment, while proceedings under other laws may continue. Authorised officers may publish particulars of convicted persons in appropriate cases.
By: - Raj Jaggi
Regular practice and attention to correction develop skills in writing, teaching and advocacy. For legal professionals, careful preparation supports effective argument and clearer communication. Small daily efforts, such as reading and studying legal provisions, can accumulate over time; attention to personal improvement is more constructive than excessive comparison with others. Discipline gains meaning from a clear purpose: professional writing can provide reliable information, clarify legal provisions and judicial decisions, and help readers avoid incorrect interpretations, rather than merely increase publication totals.
Disproportionate assets shift the evidential burden to public servants to explain unexplained wealth through reliable supporting records.
Section 13(1)(e) of the Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988 requires the prosecution initially to establish a public servant's known lawful income, assets and expenditure during the relevant period. Once assets are shown to be disproportionate to known income, the public servant must satisfactorily explain the excess because the source and acquisition of undisclosed assets are especially within that person's knowledge. Challenges to asset valuation or expenditure calculations require cogent documentary support. Unsupported claims of rental income, salary, loans or deductions do not adequately account for unexplained assets.
Pre-GST ITC set-off takes priority over transitional credit declarations, while excess transitioned credit remains subject to GST verification.
Available pre-GST input tax credit must first be adjusted against outstanding liabilities under the GVAT Act and CST Act before determining the balance eligible for transition into GST. Credit declared in FORM GST TRAN-1 and credited to the electronic credit ledger does not displace the statutory set-off of pre-GST credit against pre-GST liabilities. Any excess or wrongly transitioned credit must be verified and addressed within the GST framework, including applicable recovery provisions, rather than by denying adjustment under the earlier VAT and CST regimes.
Premature CENVAT credit availment does not justify total denial where substantive entitlement exists and no premature utilisation occurs.
Rule 12A(4) permits a Large Taxpayer Unit to transfer CENVAT credit between registered premises through prescribed accounting entries and transfer challans. Premature availment or transfer of capital-goods credit does not by itself extinguish substantive entitlement where the recipient reverses transferred credit before a show-cause notice, the originating unit remains eligible when production begins, and no premature utilisation causes Revenue prejudice. The prescribed instalment restriction for capital-goods credit regulates timing rather than eligibility; early accounting of the balance credit is procedural where that credit becomes otherwise admissible in the succeeding financial year and remains unutilised until then.
Omission of charging provision preserves compounded levy duty, but unsupported rules cannot impose interest or penalties.
Omission of Section 3A of the Central Excise Act operates as repeal for saving-law purposes, preserving accrued excise-duty liabilities and recovery proceedings under the compounded levy scheme. Accordingly, the confirmed duty demand remains enforceable despite the provision's omission. However, Section 3A did not authorise interest or penalties. Rule 96ZQ could not independently impose those liabilities because subordinate legislation requires statutory authority. Interest and penalty demands raised under that rule are therefore invalid and cannot be recovered.
Extended limitation fails where prior proceedings gave the department full knowledge of taxable renting activities and relevant facts.
Extended limitation for service tax on renting of immovable property cannot be invoked through a second show-cause notice where the department already knew the material facts from earlier correspondence, audits and notices. Prior disclosure of relevant activities negates any allegation of suppression in later proceedings on the same issue. Where the extended period is unavailable and the demand falls outside the normal limitation period, the demand is time-barred and unsustainable.
Shipping-Bill Route Selection Bars Post-Export Conversion of Failed Documentary Rebate Claims to Schedule-Rate Rebate Without Amendment
Export-rebate rules require exporters to choose, shipping-bill-wise at the time of export, between the Schedule-rate route and the document-based route. The document-based route is available only where the documented rebate exceeds the Schedule rebate by the prescribed 20% differential; claims below that threshold are ineligible. Failure of a document-based claim does not permit post-export substitution of Schedule-rate rebate where the electronic shipping bill lacked the required declaration and remains unamended. Refund proceedings cannot reopen self-assessment. Beneficial construction cannot override unambiguous substantive eligibility conditions. Omission of shipping-bill-wise calculations does not breach natural justice without demonstrable prejudice.
Air-ticket trading without commission or additional services falls outside taxable tour operator service valuation for service tax purposes.
Air-ticket booking and sale, undertaken as mere trading without airline or IATA commission and without additional service elements, does not independently constitute taxable tour operator service. Where no material shows that current transactions differ from previously examined activities, the ticket value or margin is not includible in the taxable value of tour operator service. Service tax remains payable only on the assessee's other taxable activities, not on amounts arising from such air-ticket trading.
Extended limitation for service tax requires deliberate evasion, while payments must be appropriated against corresponding liability.
Extended limitation for service-tax recovery requires evidence of fraud, wilful misstatement, suppression of facts, or deliberate intent to evade tax; audit detection or short-payment alone is insufficient. Where those elements are absent, recovery beyond the normal limitation period and related penalties cannot be sustained. Service tax and interest paid before issuance of a show cause notice must be appropriated against the corresponding liability. Although limitation does not extinguish the underlying tax liability, it bars enforcement of a time-barred recovery claim, and voluntary payment does not revive recovery of any unpaid balance beyond limitation.
Taxable-service classification cannot rely on a later-expanded entry or an appellate-stage alternative classification, defeating the proposed demand.
Taxable-service classification for tool-management activities must be tested against the charging entry in force when supplied; a later expansion of Business Support Service cannot apply retrospectively, and a demand cannot be sustained under a classification absent from the show-cause notice. Capital goods removed as such may trigger CENVAT-credit reversal, but the export-related reversal demand was treated as revenue-neutral. Extended limitation and penalty require independent proof of suppression; audit detection or an interpretational dispute alone is insufficient, so the related interest and penal consequences did not survive.
Foreign secondment taxability depends on substantive employment nexus, while genuine interpretative disputes bar extended limitation and suppression penalties.
Foreign-group secondment arrangements are taxable under reverse charge where contractual terms retain the foreign entity's substantive employment nexus, even if the Indian entity pays salaries, directs daily work and receives personnel without a mark-up. Temporary assignments preserving foreign employment, salary reference, social-security, pension and termination arrangements amount to foreign manpower supply before 1 July 2012 and taxable services thereafter. Reverse-charge liability remains payable in cash despite revenue neutrality. However, an interpretative dispute and absence of deliberate suppression prevent use of the extended limitation period and penalties; recovery is confined to the normal period, excluding time-barred pre-July 2012 liability, subject to verification and re-quantification.
Natural justice exception preserves writ jurisdiction when ignored extension requests deny a meaningful opportunity to defend.
Breach of natural justice can permit writ jurisdiction under Article 226 despite an available appellate remedy, where the affected party was denied a reasonable opportunity to respond. A quasi-judicial authority must consider and decide a request for additional time to produce material before drawing an adverse inference from its non-production. Proceeding without addressing a pending extension request, while relying on the absence of the requested material, undermines the opportunity of hearing and may invalidate the resulting determination.
Women accused of money laundering may seek regular bail without statutory twin conditions when prolonged custody makes trial unlikely.
Women accused of money laundering fall within the first proviso to Section 45(1), which exempts them from the twin bail conditions and places their bail applications under the ordinary bail jurisdiction of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita. Prolonged pre-trial custody, a set-aside cognizance order, a lengthy prosecution complaint with numerous witnesses, pending scheduled-offence investigations, and prior attachment of assets may support regular bail where trial is unlikely to begin or conclude soon. The bail assessment remains without prejudice to the merits of the allegations.
Saved FERA penal proceedings remain subject to criminal appellate jurisdiction despite FEMA's separate appellate framework.
Statutory savings under Section 49 of FEMA and Section 6 of the General Clauses Act preserve FERA offences, accrued penal liabilities, penalties and related proceedings after FERA's repeal. FEMA's appellate provision supplies the forum without changing the penal character of saved FERA adjudications. Original Side revenue-appeal procedures apply to civil FEMA contraventions rather than saved FERA penal proceedings. Appeals challenging penalties for saved FERA contraventions are therefore maintainable in criminal appellate jurisdiction, and the preliminary objection to maintainability fails.
Delayed-payment interest requires a contractual basis; an unchallenged full-and-final settlement undertaking precludes further supply-related claims.
Delayed-payment interest for raw materials supplied during CIRP and liquidation requires a contractual or otherwise binding basis. Where invoices contain no interest stipulation, no separate agreement imposes interest, and a private association circular is non-binding, no additional interest claim arises. Acceptance without objection of the audited amount, coupled with an undertaking that payment constituted full and final settlement with no further proceedings, estops the operational creditor from pursuing further claims. Unsupported allegations of financial duress do not displace that undertaking.
Finalised valuation challenges remain barred by res judicata when prior objections were conclusively determined and implementation liberty is limited.
Reopening a finalised valuation is barred by res judicata where valuation objections, including alleged mathematical errors and asset-base reassessment, were previously determined in appellate proceedings and the Supreme Court declined interference. Failure to use available opportunities before the registered valuer and Tribunal cannot justify a fresh valuation after final determination. Liberty to seek further directions for implementing the original order is confined to execution and does not reopen the valuation mechanism. The doctrine of merger does not permit re-agitation of settled matters; renewed challenges undermine finality of litigation and constitute abuse of process.
SFIO investigation orders survive FIR quashing when broader fraud allegations provide relevant grounds for Central Government review.
Section 212(1)(c) of the Companies Act permits the Central Government to assign an SFIO investigation in public interest where its opinion rests on relevant and demonstrable circumstances. Judicial review is limited to the decision-making process and does not permit reassessment of the adequacy of material unless the action is arbitrary, relies on irrelevant material, or shows non-application of mind. Quashing an FIR after settlement with certain homebuyers did not negate broader allegations of false loan documents and fund siphoning. The recorded investigation scope concerning transactions, money trail, diversion of funds, and beneficiaries supported the order's validity and excluded judicial interference.
Passenger baggage classification excludes Tribunal appeals, requiring revision proceedings even where imported gold is allegedly smuggled.
The proviso to Section 129A(1) excludes Tribunal appellate jurisdiction over Commissioner (Appeals) orders concerning goods imported or exported as passenger baggage. This exclusion turns on the mode and category of import, not on whether the goods were bona fide, duty-free eligible, declared, or liable to confiscation. Gold recovered from an arriving passenger remains baggage under Section 77 despite allegations of smuggling. Appeals concerning such baggage-related orders must therefore be pursued by revision before the Revisional Authority under Section 129DD, rather than before the Tribunal.