The National Anti-Profiteering Authority did not find the construction service provider, M/s Aryan Hometec guilty of profiteering.
The Applicant stated that he had purchased a fiat in the Respondent’s project “Aryan Founttain Square” and had alleged that the Respondent had included VAT and Service Tax in the MRP of the flat at the time of booking and demanded 12% GST on the pending amount which had resulted in double taxation, whereas the Respondent was actually required to pass on the benefit of ITC for the construction done after the GST implementation which he had not passed on.
It is also revealed from the DGAP’s Report that the project under investigation was started in the year 2012 and most of the work had been completed in 2014, however, the project was completed in March, 2018 and the OC was obtained on 11.04.2018. Further, the Respondent had not paid his Service Tax liability in the pre-GST period and had also defaulted in the payment of GST and filing of GST Returns.
The DGAP has also claimed that on scrutiny of the Service Tax and GST Returns submitted by the Respondent, it was observed that the Respondent had not availed any CENVAT credit of the input services during the period from 01.04.2016 to 30.06.2017 and had also not availed any ITC in the post-GST period from 01.07.2017 to 30.04.2019 in respect of the above project.
The State GST Authorities had also canceled the GST registration of the Respondent on 31.08.2018 as he had not filed the GSTR-38 Returns from September 2018 onwards and GSTR-1 Returns from January 2019 onwards.
It can be concluded that this case does not fall under the ambit of Anti-Profiteering provisions of Section 171 of the CGST Act 2017 as the Respondent had not availed the benefit of additional ITC in the post-GST regime. Hence, the allegation of not passing on the benefit of ITC is not established against the Respondent.
Therefore, the Respondent is not liable to pass on the benefit of ITC to Applicant No. 1 and the other recipients. Accordingly, the provisions of Section 171 (1) of the CGST Act, 2017 have not been contravened in the present case.
The Authority headed by Chairman B.N. Sharma and Technical Members J.C. Chauhan and Amand Shah said that the application filed by the Applicant requesting action against the Respondent for alleged violation of the provisions of the Section 171 of the CGST Act is not maintainable and hence the same is dismissed.
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