Bangalore Golf Club Vs Assistant Commissioner of Commercial Taxes (Karnataka High Court)
The writ petition challenged a show cause notice dated 07.05.2024 and its summary dated 08.05.2024 issued under Section 73 of the Central Goods and Services Tax (CGST) Act, 2017. The notices covered multiple tax periods, namely the financial years 2019–20, 2020–21, 2021–22, 2022–23, and 2023–24. The petitioner contended that the notices were invalid as they consolidated several financial years into a single show cause notice.
The petitioner argued that the respondent authority could not issue a common notice by grouping multiple assessment years together. It was submitted that under Section 73 of the CGST Act, actions must be completed within the relevant financial year, and the limitation period of three years applies separately to each assessment year. On this basis, it was contended that clubbing multiple tax periods into a single notice is impermissible, and separate notices ought to have been issued for each assessment year under Section 73(1).
To support this contention, reliance was placed on a judgment of the Madras High Court, which had addressed a similar issue. That judgment, in turn, relied on a decision of the Supreme Court holding that where an assessment involves different assessment years, each year must be treated independently and can be distinctly separated.
