“We can’t supply the material” – a shock given to the managing
director of a leading pharmaceutical company which supplies lifesaving drugs to
all big hospitals in the country. The reason – GST registration was cancelled,
and e-way bills cannot be generated. The company has no clue, nor received any
notice of any default or department intention to cancel the registration. The
business so critical to healthcare services in the country has come to a
standstill. What suddenly happened?
Service of a
notice or an order is an extremely critical event in tax litigation and has
been a matter of dispute
over past many years. Introduction of technology based GST
has just added another dimension to it.
Until now,
taxpayers have, in many cases, argued non receipt of a notice or an order as a
bonafide ground of delay in responding to the notice or filing of appeal. In a
few cases, such arguments were made even to cover the lapse on part of the
taxpayer in responding to the notice or filing the appeal within the stipulated
timeline. The revenue authorities were generally not able to establish service
of notice/ order and that too to the authorized person and hence, the said
arguments were generally upheld.
Two recent decisions by the Kerala High Court and one by the Madhya Pradesh High Court are going to change this landscape completely. The GST law, as much as it is driven by the technology, has specified manner of service of notice/ order. The high courts have held that uploading of a notice or an order on the common portal maintained by GSTN is not only valid buy the only mode permissible under the law. If this is the legal position, the argument of non-receipt of a notice/ order simply goes out of the discussion. Now, if a taxpayer defaults in responding to the notice or delays in filing of an appeal within the prescribed statutory timelines, the legal consequences would follow. If delay is beyond the maximum period allowed to be condoned under the GST law, the taxpayer would have no choice but to approach the jurisdictional
high court. Given
the approach of the judiciary towards non-compliant taxpayers, the relief may not be forthcoming.
It is,
therefore, imperative for any GST registered assessee to regularly visit the
common portal maintained by the GSTN in order to retrieve any communication from the GST authorities and respond
thereto within the stipulated timelines in order to avoid any unpleasant and avoidable complexities which could even result in bringing
his business to a complete halt.
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