Delhi High court Judgement

   GSTR 3B can be rectified – Delhi Highcourt has allowed Bharti Airtel to rectify return to claim refund of Rs. 923 Crore         

 

Delhi Highcourt has allowed Bharti Airtel to rectify GSTR 3b for the month of July 2017 to September 2017 and asked government officials to verify the same within period of two weeks and process refund if any.

It held the failure of government to operationalise the statutory returns, GSTR 2, 2A and 3 prescribed under the CGST Act, cannot prejudice the assessee. The GSTR 3B which was merely a summary return as an alternative did not have the statutory features of the returns prescribed under the Act.

Therefore, if there were errors in capturing ITC on account of which cash was paid for discharging GST liability instead of utilising ITC which could not be captured correctly at that time, the return should be allowed to be rectified in the very month in which the ITC was not recorded and the cash paid should be available as refund.

Thus non availability of returns resulted in deficiency in eligible ITC for the month of July 2017 – September 2017 in form GSTR 3B has resulted in excess payment of cash by the Bharti Airtel.

The argument was on excess payment of tax which it could not adjust in October 2018 return due to government circular of 2018 which disallowed companies to make rectifications in earlier returns filed.

 

CA Shubham Chhajed