The Delhi High Court directed to examine refund claim in the matter of failure to upload application of GST refund due to technical glitches.
The petitioner has filed the present petition, essentially, aggrieved by the denial of refund of unutilised input tax credit (ITC) accumulated in respect of the Goods and Services Tax paid on inputs in respect of the zero-rated supplies – goods exported without payment of Integrated Goods and Services tax (IGST) – during the period from July 2017 to March 2018.
The petitioner impugned an Order-in-Original dated 11.03.2020 whereby the Proper Officer rejected the petitioner’s application for refund on the ground that it was filed beyond the period of two years as specified under Section 54(1) of the Central Goods and Services Tax Act, 2017.
The petitioner attempted to file an application for refund of unutilised ITC for the month of August 2017 on 14.05.2018. However, the petitioner could not complete the online filing of this application due to a technical error encountered on the GST portal. The petitioner once again attempted to file an application for refund of unutilised ITC for the month of July, 2017 on 08.08.2018. However, the petitioner was unable to complete the process on account of technical errors encountered on the GST Portal.
The petitioner’s application for refund under Section 54 of the CGST Act was rejected on the ground that it was filed beyond the period of two years from the relevant date being the date of export of the consignments. The Proper Officer held that since the first consignment was exported on 08.09.2017, the last date for filing an application for refund of unutilised ITC in respect of the said export was 07.09.2019. The last consignment was exported on 29.01.2018 under an export invoice dated 24.01.2018.
A Division Bench comprising Justices Vibhu Bakhru and Amit Mahajan observed that “The respondent has denied that the concerned officer had misguided the petitioner in any manner and there is no record of any advice given by the concerned officer. However, we are inclined to accept the petitioner’s version that he had made oral enquiries for filing an application for refund. Ordinarily, this would be no ground to overlook the delay but this Court cannot be oblivious of the fact that during the initial period of the rollout of the GST regime, both taxpayers and the officials of the GST departments had faced innumerable difficulties which were being addressed.”
“In view of the above, we direct the proper officer to examine the petitioner’s claim for refund and process the same, if it is found that the petitioner is entitled to the same” the Court noted.
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