Inadvertent error of claiming Input Tax Credit relating to imports under IGST in Column No. 4A(5) instead of claiming it under Column No. 4A(1) of Form GSTR-3B .
Petitioner inadvertently considered import IGST pertaining to July 2017 and March'2018 as local IGST and import IGST pertaining to March 2018 as local CGST and SGST.
As the figures were entered in wrong column, this resulted in a mismatch between the Form GSTR-3B and Form GSTR-2A forms.
This came ro notice of the Assessee during Desk Audit by the Department.
Assessee seek permission to rectify the genuine error which was rejected.
Based on the audit report, a show cause notice was issued under Section 73(1) inter alia, proposing to disallow the ITC pertaining to the above mentionederrors committed by the petitioner, aggrieved by which, the petitioner is before this Court by way of the present petition.
The copies of the returns submitted by the petitioner clearly demonstrate the innocuousness of the errors committed by the petitioner.
The said errors are entirely bona fide and inadvertent and a lenient view is required to be taken, particularly since the tax periods involved relate to the very first year of the GST regime.
Judgment of Apex Court in Bharti Airtel’s case cannot be made applicable to the facts of the case as the petitioner only seeks to shift the ITC already claimed from one head to another.
The authorities must avoid a blinkered view while adjudicating/assessing the tax liability of a dealer under the Act.
Further, the respondents are aware of that there is an error committed by the petitioner, but has chosen to selectively ignore the IGST import amounts reflected in the ICEGATE portal for the tax periods in dispute, which is yet another circumstance to uphold the claim of the petitioner.
The petitioner is entitled for the limited relief of being permitted to make the necessary changes to its GSTR 3-B returns for the relevant period, particularly, since doing so would not cause any prejudice to the Revenue nor would it upset the chain of credit under the GST scheme.
The respondents are further directed to permit the petitioner to carry outthe said corrections online by reopening the portal for a limited period to be notified to the petitioner.
Due to technical glitches/defects, if it is not possible for the respondentsto permit such corrections online or on the portal, respondents are hereby directed to permit to carry out such corrections via manually/physically.
This Judgement is correct as in this case the assessee was not requesting for switchover of entries, as was in case of Bharti Airtel, but was requesting rectification in column of GST Returns.
In this case the errors that were committed in filing of the Returns occurred during the nascent stages of the Goods and Services Tax regime, which was brought into force with effect from 01.07.2017 and that there was a quantum change in the indirect tax regime, which required the filing of number of Returns in new and different formats and that, accordingly, minor and inadvertent errors, such as those
committed by the petitioner were entirely bona-fide and in such circumstances, a lenient view is warranted, particularly since rectification of errors at this stage will
not cause any loss of revenue nor will there be any cascading effect that will upset the scheme of GST.
For the FY 2017-18 furnishing of returns through Form GSTR- 3B was only a stop-gap measure until the Government operationalised the statutory returns under Forms GSTR 2, 2A and 3 as prescribed under the GST Act and that the auto fill facility/auto-setter mechanism that auto populates details into Form GSTR 3B and GSTR 2B was only made available from 04.09.2020 and prior to that, dealers had to manually enter the GST payable into the GST Portal, which was ridden with technical and electronic glitches.
Title: ORIENT TRADERS Vs THE DEPUTY COMMISSIONER OF COMMERCIAL TAXES (AUDIT)-3, 4, DGSTO-3, BENGALURU
Court: Karnataka High Court
Citation: WRIT PETITION No. 2911 OF 2022 (T-RES)
Dated: 16-Dec-2022
Compiled by: Abhishek Raja Ram
Comment: