GST Wrongly paid to Railway under Bonafide Belief: Bombay HC Orders Refund and directs Dept to Take a Sympathetic View [Read Order]

In an assessee-friendly ruling where the payment of GST was made to the railway instead of the GST department, the Bombay High Court has asked the department to take a sympathetical view while imposing penalty and interest finding that the payment was made under a bonafide belief.

The petitioner, Mr. Arun Krishnachandra Goswami has been carrying on business of advertising and providing advertising solutions to various parties. the petitioner, by mistake paid the amount of GST to the railways instead of the Government of India through the CGST authorities and the State of Maharashtra through the SGST authorities. The entire amount has been paid to Government of India, through Indian Railways.

A division bench of K.R. Shriram & A.S. Doctor noted that there was no attempt of evading tax and the Petitioner has paid the amount wrongly to Railways and due to huge Railway network, Railway was not in an immediate administrative position to check and react to such wrongful deposits.

“We, therefore, direct Respondent No.5 to ensure that the amounts which have been wrongly paid by Petitioner to Railways should be paid to the CGST authorities and SGST authorities within two weeks from today. We also hope that in view of the unusual facts and circumstances of this case, the CGST authorities and SGST authorities would consider Petitioner’s case sympathetically when it comes to interest and penalty. Unless they have some other reason, Petitioner should not be saddled with interest and penalty,” the Court said.

Concluding the order, the Court observed that “After this order was dictated, learned ASG pointed out that since the GST payments are made electronically and the system will only accept when the payment is made by party concerned, his instructions are that it will not be possible to pay the amount directly to the CGST/SGST authorities. Respondent No.5 is, therefore, directed to pay this amount to Petitioner within one week. Petitioner shall pay this amount within one week after receiving the credit in its account. The CGST/SGST authorities are directed to open the portal for Petitioner. Mr. Mishra and Ms. Chavan state that they will inform the concerned authorities of CGST/SGST, respectively, to provide within one week the link/portal details to Petitioner to make this payment.”

To Read the full text of the Order CLICK HERE

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