The Goods and Services Tax Network (GSTN) has recently issued an advisory explaining how taxpayers are to withdraw pending appeals in order to qualify for relief under the waiver scheme as encapsulated under Section 128A of the Central Goods and Services Tax (CGST) Act, 2017.
Under this scheme, any appeal against a tax-demand order must not be pending before the appellate authority for the waiver to apply. The advisory, dated May 14, 2025, sets out two scenarios for withdrawing appeals.
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If the taxpayer files a withdrawal application (APL 01W) before the portal issues its final acknowledgment (APL 02), the system automatically converts the original appeal (APL 01) status from “Appeal submitted” to “Appeal withdrawn”.
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If instead the withdrawal application is lodged after the final acknowledgment has been generated, the appeal remains “submitted” until the appellate authority manually approves the withdrawal; upon such approval, the portal then updates the status to “Appeal withdrawn”.
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In both instances, once the status reads “Appeal withdrawn,” the taxpayer is deemed to have fulfilled the requirement that no appeal remains pending, and can proceed with a waiver application. Taxpayers availing the scheme have been advised to upload a screenshot of the appeal case folder showing status as “Appeal withdrawn” to demonstrate their compliance.
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The scheme is just another means to formalize the system which requires that no appellate remedies have been sought for by the concerned taxpayer and is pending adjudication before the authorities. The new advisory demonstrates a change in the mechanism for taxpayers to unconditionally forgo appellate remedies in order to be beneficiaries of the waiver scheme.
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