Quashing penalty under Section 129 of the Uttar Pradesh Goods and Service Tax Act, 2017, Justice Shekhar B Saraf said, “Burden of proof lies on petitioner in certain cases to prove there was no evasion of tax.
However, when the error in the documents is only clerical or typographical, the initial burden of proof was on the department to show there was intention to evade tax.”
During the arguments, the counsel for petitioner submitted that the only error in the entire documentation was wrong vehicle number in the e-way bill and that the error was inadvertent and there was no intention to evade tax as established by the department because there were no discrepancies in the goods or any other documentation.
Allowing the writ petition filed by M/s Indeutsch Industries private limited, the court in its decision dated Feb 19 set aside the orders dated June 22, 2019 and Jun 22, 2018, passed by the GST authorities, observing, “On the perusal of above principles, it is clear that intention to evade tax is sine qua non before imposition of penalty. In the present case, the department had failed to establish any such intention. Further, the appellate authority had also failed to look into all documents produced by the petition to rebut the allegation of intention to evade tax.”
Source: The Times of India
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