The Gujarat High Court directed the GST Authority to open an online portal to enable the submission of rectified Form GST TRAN-2 electronically.
The writ-applicant, Jigal Pvt. Ltd. is engaged in the business of distribution of Maruti cars as well as spare parts and accessories. Since the writ-applicants were not engaged in any manufacturing activity, they were not holding registration under the Central Excise Act, 1944. However, the goods sold by the writ-applicants were laden with excise duty as charged and paid by the manufacturers.
Section 140(3) of the Central Goods and Services Tax Act, 2017 allowed transitional tax credit for the goods in stock. If the duty paying document in respect of the goods in stock was available, then the input tax credit of such duty could be claimed in Form GST TRAN-1.
However, if the duty paying document was not available, then the proviso to Section 140(3) of the GST Act allowed claiming of deemed credit at the prescribed percentage points by filing the Form GST TRAN-2 for a maximum period of 6 months.
The writ-applicants were entitled to claim deemed transitional tax credit under the proviso to Section 140(3) of the GST Act. For such purpose, they were first required to declare the duty paid stock in the Form GST TRAN-1 within the stipulated time limit.
It is not in dispute that the writ-applicants duly filed the Form GST TRAN-1 within the available time limit. However, for the purpose of availing deemed credit, a further Form GST TRAN-2 was to be filed for a maximum period of 6 months from July 2017 to December 2017.
While filing the Form GST TRAN-2 for the month of July 2017 with the correct value of the output supply and also the correct amount of the CGST paid, a typographical error crept in.
Since the closing stock was erroneously shown as zero in the month of July 2017 and the opening stock in the Form GST TRAN-2 for the subsequent months was auto populated on the GST portal, the writ- applicants were not allowed to file the Form GST TRAN-2 and claim deemed transitional tax credit for the months from August 2017 onwards. The writ-applicants approached the authorities on a number of occasions requesting to allow the rectification of the Form GST TRAN-2 for the month of July 2017 as it was an inadvertent typographical error because of which they were unable to file the Form GST TRAN-2 for the subsequent months.
The division bench of Justice J.B.Pardiwala and Ilesh J. Vora directed the respondent authority to either open an online portal so as to enable the writ-applicants to again file a rectified Form GST TRAN-2 electronically, for the month of July 2017 as well as the Form GST TRAN-2 for the subsequent months from August to December 2017, or accept the manually filed the Form GST TRAN-2 for all the months with necessary corrections.
“The respondents are further directed not to raise any objection of time limit in filing the Form GST TRAN-2 for the months from August 2017 to December 2017 as the portal did not allow the writ-applicants to file such forms because of a bonafide error in the form filed for the month of July 2017,” the court said.
Subscribe Taxscan Premium to view the Judgment
Support our journalism by subscribing to Taxscan AdFree. We welcome your comments at info@taxscan.in
