Retrospective amendment of tax laws may validate past demands but must not impair vested rights or be arbitrary.
Retrospective amendments may validate past tax recoveries or cure drafting defects and are permissible when they correct omissions, clarify ambiguous provisions, or alter the legal basis on which prior judicial decisions were rendered. Such amendments must be reasonable, corrective or declaratory in nature, and adhere to the principle of fairness; they cannot lawfully deprive vested rights, impose new liabilities, or criminalize pre-amendment conduct absent clear legislative intent, and measures that do so are presumptively prospective and subject to constitutional challenge. (AI Summary)

Input tax credit on COVID related expenditures may be claimable when incurred in course of business and not legally blocked.
Entitlement to input tax credit on COVID related expenditures depends on Section 16(1) usage "in the course or furtherance of business" and exclusions in Section 17(5). Office sanitisation and hygiene expenses qualify as business inputs and are claimable unless expressly blocked. Health related costs (insurance, safety kits, training) become creditable where they are obligatory under law, as by Disaster Management directives, whereas medical treatment is separately exempt. CSR distributions arguably do not constitute voluntary gifts or free samples and thus, given the statutory CSR obligation, may meet the course of business test and attract input credit unless covered by section 17(5)(h). (AI Summary)

Liquidated damages under GST: compensatory breach payments are not consideration for tolerating an act and may not be taxable.
Liquidated damages are pre agreed compensation for breach intended to ensure performance, not consideration for tolerating an act; Schedule II's reference to agreeing to tolerate an act only creates a taxable supply where there is a clear consensual agreement to tolerate, and amendments to section 7 require that an activity first qualify as a supply before classification, so pure compensatory liquidated damages that do not reflect an agreement to tolerate should not be treated as supply under GST. (AI Summary)