Insights & Analysis
Supreme Court Doubts the 'Fraudulent Intent' Test for Stamp Duty Undervaluation, Refers the Question to a Larger Bench
A two-judge Bench of the Supreme Court has cast doubt on a sixteen-year-old precedent requiring proof of dishonest intent before a registering authority can refer an undervalued sale deed for a stamp-duty enquiry — and referred the question to a larger Bench rather than decide it alone.
13 min readWhose Delay Is It? Delhi High Court Holds a ₹20 Crore Customs Demand Timely Because the Assessee's Own Writ Stay Suspended the Section 28(9) Clock
GKEM International argued that a ₹20.18 crore customs demand was time-barred because its show cause notice sat in the department's 'Call Book' for years. The Delhi High Court disagreed: the delay was occasioned by the assessee's own writ petition and interim stay, which is exactly the circumstance Section 28(9A) excludes from the limitation clock — and the Call Book entry was merely the administrative record of that fact, not its source.
14 min readNo Hearing, No Time to Pay: Bombay High Court Quashes a Section 74A GST Order and Fixes Personal Cost on the Officer Who Passed It
A GST demand order recited that personal hearing was 'not applicable' and was signed off while the taxpayer's sixty-day window to pay up and avoid penalty was still open. The Bombay High Court quashed it on both grounds, held the alternate remedy of a statutory appeal no bar, and ordered the department to recover its Rs. 50,000 cost from the officer who passed the order.
14 min readA Forty-Year-Old Land Title Cannot Be Reopened by Recasting the Dispute as Encroachment, Supreme Court Holds
A department reopened a forty-year-old land record on the strength of a third-party complaint that a lake was being encroached upon. The Supreme Court held that framing the dispute as one of public interest does not let a revenue authority sidestep a statutory limitation period that had expired decades earlier.
13 min readA Housing Board's Highest Bidder Gets No Vested Right to Allotment, Rajasthan High Court Holds
Across thirteen connected appeals, homebuyers who had offered the highest price at Rajasthan Housing Board auctions saw their allotments quashed after the Board relied on departmental comparisons of nearby, similarly sized properties. The High Court held that being the highest bidder is not enough where approval is still pending — but the authority's own reasons must survive scrutiny too.
12 min readBlocked Is Not Paid: Delhi High Court Holds Input Tax Credit Restricted Under Rule 86A Cannot Satisfy the Mandatory Pre-Deposit for a GST Appeal
A registered person facing a Rs. 33.32 lakh GST demand wanted Rs. 3.33 lakh of its own input tax credit — already frozen under Rule 86A — treated as satisfying the ten per cent pre-deposit needed to appeal. The Delhi High Court refused: a restriction under Rule 86A prevents debit from the electronic credit ledger, it does not appropriate the credit toward any demand, and the two authorities holding otherwise on unrestricted credit had no application to credit that is actually blocked.
13 min readConsistency Is Sacrosanct in Revenue Matters: Bombay High Court Bars a Rs. 21.92 Crore Service Tax Demand the Department Had Already Dropped Against an Identically Placed Assessee
A show cause notice issued roughly two years after the transactions it targeted, confirming Rs. 21.92 crore in service tax, interest and penalty on a brewery's contract-bottling arrangement with its brand owner. The Bombay High Court's Aurangabad Bench dismissed the Revenue's appeal against the Tribunal's finding that the demand was time-barred, holding that the extended period of limitation cannot be invoked without a specific averment of fraud or suppression in the show cause notice, and that the Department could not press an appeal against one assessee after having accepted an identical Tribunal order in favour of another.
14 min readA Bankrupt Developer's Lease Penalty Is Not the Homebuyers' Debt, Supreme Court Holds
When a NOIDA-leased housing project collapsed into insolvency, the development authority sought years of penalty charges for the developer's own delay from the very homebuyers who had pooled their savings to finish construction. The Supreme Court says the penalty stays with the developer.
13 min readA Homebuyer Who Splits One Grievance Into Serial RERA Complaints Can Lose All of Them, High Court Holds
A flat buyer who exhausted three rounds of RERA complaints over the same apartment learned that filing them one after another, rather than together, can cost him the last one entirely. The Punjab and Haryana High Court's ruling reaches every allottee tempted to hold a grievance back for a later round.
12 min read