The Bombay High Court, in a recent ruling has remanded a time-barred Goods and Services Tax (GST) refund claim of the petitioner, owing to the extended limitation period as per various Supreme Court orders in light of the Covid-19 pandemic.
The challenge in the petition was to the order denying refund of Goods and Services Tax (GST) the two periods that are from April 2018 to March 2019 and April 2019 to December 2019.
Upon perusal of the Central Goods and Services Tax (CGST) Act, 2017 it was observed from Section 54(1) that, if a refund is sought of any tax, then an application has to be made before the expiry of two years from the relevant date.
It was observed that, the impugned orders made no reference to which category the Petitioner’s claims would fall and what would be the relevant date i.e. starting point for limitation period for the Petitioner’s claim for refund.
Placing reliance on the order of the Supreme Court in Suo Motu Writ Petition (C) No.3/2020 (In Re: Cognizance For Extension of Limitation), the petitioner claimed that the impugned order be set aside.
Observing that no attempt was made in the impugned order to ascertain the starting point of the period of limitation, the impugned orders were set aside by the Division Bench of the Bombay High Court comprising Justice Gauri Godse and Justice Nitin Jamdar.
Consequently, the refund applications were restored to the file of the Assistant Commissioner.
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