Calcutta High Court
3 articles
Voidable, Not Void: Calcutta High Court Shields an Innocent DFIA Licence Transferee from a Decade-Old Customs Demand
Comet Overseas bought a genuine, validly transferable duty-free import licence for value, through proper banking channels, years before the original licence-holder's export obligation was found to rest on falsely declared goods. The Calcutta High Court held the licence remained voidable, not void, and that an unimpeached bona fide transferee cannot be made to answer in customs duty, interest and redemption fine for a fraud committed further up the chain.
13 min readDepartmental Knowledge Defeats the Extended Period: Calcutta High Court Quashes a Central Excise Demand Founded on the Assessee's Own Cost Audit Report
Hindalco Industries faced a Central Excise demand of Rs. 6,29,920 built entirely on its own Cost Audit Report, three years after departmental officers had personally witnessed the very stock shortages now called suppression. The Calcutta High Court held the extended period of limitation unavailable: what the proviso to Section 11A requires is a deliberate act of concealment by the assessee, not the mere absence of departmental knowledge, and a demand cannot simultaneously rest on a statutory record and be founded on its suppression.
13 min readBona Fide Buyer, Defaulting Seller: Calcutta High Court Curbs the Mechanical Use of Section 74 to Deny GST Input Tax Credit
A logistics company claimed input tax credit on invoices from a supplier who later stopped filing returns. The department invoked Section 74's fraud-based extended period to raise a Rs. 6.3 crore demand two years after ordinary limitation had run out. The Calcutta High Court quashed the order, applying binding precedent that a buyer's credit cannot be held hostage to a seller's default, and that dressing up an ordinary demand as fraud does not extend the clock.
13 min read