The Kerala High Court has issued notice over the plea challenging the condition to apply for refund after filing NIL refund claim in FORM GST RFD-01A/RFD-01.
The petitioner, Soura Natural Energy Solutions India Pvt. Ltd. challenged the Condition (b) in Para 3 of the Circular No.110/29/2019-GST dated October 3, 2019 issued in the context of GST refund on the grounds that the same being ultra vires Section 54 (3) of Central Goods and Service Tax Act 2017 and also being arbitrary, unreasonable and it defeats the very objective of issuing the said circular.
As per the Refund claim procedure designed on the GST portal, a refund claim for a tax period cannot be filed without filing a refund claim for the previous period and if there is no refund claim for the previous tax periods, the taxpayer is required to file NIL refund claims for each of the tax periods starting from the date of registration. These conditions are introduced by the Respondents on their own and not provided under CGST Act or Rules.
The Petitioner was filing a refund claim for the first time for the tax periods June 2019 to October 2019, it was required to select ‘NIL refund’ claims for the earlier tax periods (July 2017 on the GST).
In the said process, the petitioner inadvertently selected NIL claim for June 2019, July 2019, August 2019, September 2019 and October 2019 as well. When the petitioner realized that it had the option to file a fresh refund claim for the tax periods in respect of which it had filed NIL refund claims, it submitted a refund claim for October 2019.
However, the same was rejected by Respondent authority stating that, as per Para 3 (b) of Circular No.110/29/2019-GST dated October 3, 2019, the petitioner is not entitled to claim refund for June 2019, as it had filed refund claim for subsequent tax periods (July 2019 to October 2019).
Therefore, the petitioner prayed before the court that to direct the Respondents to make facility on the GST common portal to enable the petitioner to file a revised refund claim for the tax periods, in respect of which the petitioner had inadvertently filed a ‘NIL’ refund claim or to accept such revised refund claim manually.
The Petitioner was represented by Advocates Shameem Ahmed, Cyriac Tom and Thariq Maideen.
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