Saluja Motors Pvt. Ltd. Vs State of H.P and others (Himachal Pradesh High Court)
No Prejudice Caused by Non-Issuance of Formal SCN When Assessee Was Aware of Case and Contested it: HP HC
Petitioner is a Pvt. Ltd. Company and registered with GST department. Petitioner was an authorized dealer of Ford India Pvt. Ltd. and was engaged in selling of motor cars, vehicle and part thereof and their repair and services. The petitioner at the time of filing GSTR-3B for the month of February, 2018 had an available balance of ITC amounting to Rs.74,76,049/- under IGST head and Rs.24,44,483/- under the head ‘Cess’ has been reflected in his GSTR-2A. It inadvertently availed the input tax credit of IGST under Cess and the ITC of Cess under IGST, whereby credit of one head was availed in other and of the other was availed under former head. The case of the petitioner was taken up for the Audit u/s 65 and the petitioner was served with a notice for conducting the audit for the year 2017-18. The audit proceedings were concluded with Final Audit Report whereby the petitioner was confronted with certain discrepancies including the fact that the petitioner had claimed excess credit under ‘Cess’ as compared to the credit available for availment and hence, was directed to pay the excess availed ‘Cess’ credit along with interest and penalty. In furtherance of the Final Audit Report petitioner was issued a summary of show cause notice in Form GST DRC-01 whereby, demand of Rs.31,67,808/- was proposed to be made from the petitioner under ‘Cess’ on account of excess claim of credit, without considering the fact that it was not actually claimed in excess, rather this was credit of IGST inadvertently claimed under the ‘Cess’ head. Petitioner filed a detailed reply to SCN submitted that the alleged excess claim had occurred due to clerical mistake whereas it was not an actual case of excess claim with an intent to take excess credit.
