Goods and Service Tax Act, 2017
Section 54—Refund of tax—Denial of—Petitioner inadvertently filed his GST returns under his old GST registration number as well as under new GST registration number—Tax deposited under both returns—Refund application seeking refund of tax amount on old (cancelled) registration—Tax deposited under cancelled registration number could not have been retained by authorities as it was not a deposit as per law—Impugned order set aside and petitioner entitled to refund of the amounts which was deposited under the erroneous return filed under the cancelled registration.
[Para 13, 14 & 17]
Section 107—Order rejecting appeal on ground of limitation—Matter relating to denial of refund claim—Petitioner had filed his appeal online, which was within the prescribed limitation i.e. within a period of four months from the impugned order—Although, in its order, the appellate authority has recorded the said fact, however, merely on the ground that physical copies were not furnished and/ or on some deficiencies on documents to be uploaded being not complied by the petitioner, the appellate authority taking a hypertechnical view of the matter, rejected the petitioner’s appeal, without examining such essential facts and without touching the merits of the petitioner’s case—Such approach of the appellate authority was not only contrary to the record and illegal, but also not consistent with the provisions of Sections 107(1) and (4) of the CGST Act—Any deficiency in filing the appeal/application like failure to file physical documents, cannot make the appeal, which was registered on the online portal within the prescribed period of limitation, to be labelled and/or held to be barred by limitation.
[Paras 15 & 16]