Refund Application Could Not Be Uploaded Due To Technical Glitches, Refund Can't Be Denied: Delhi High Court

The Delhi High Court has held that the refund application was filed twice on the GST portal but could not be uploaded due to technical glitches.

The bench of Justice Vibhu Bakhru and Justice Amit Mahajan has observed that during the initial period of the rollout of the GST regime, both taxpayers and the officials of the GST departments faced innumerable difficulties that were being addressed. Some of the difficulties still persist and are being addressed. In this environment, it is not difficult to accept that a taxpayer would have sought advice from the jurisdictional officers. The petitioner acted in a bona fide manner.

The petitioner/assessee challenged the denial of refund of unutilized input tax credit (ITC) accumulated in respect of the Goods and Services Tax paid on inputs in respect of the zero-rated supplies—goods exported without payment of IGST.

The petitioner claimed that he made several efforts to manually submit his application. However, the concerned officer declined to accept it. The assertion is disputed by the respondents or department, as the respondents do not have any record of the same.

The petitioner contended that the authorities had completely ignored the technical glitches and errors encountered by the petitioner initially at the time of filing monthly refund applications. The applications were within time; however, the petitioner could not complete the filing without any fault on its part. Therefore, the petitioner's claim could not be rejected on the ground of limitation.

The department contended that the petitioner had faced technical issues in uploading the refund applications. A ticket in respect of the petitioner's complaint was also issued on August 8, 2018. However, the petitioner did not file any claim for a refund thereafter. He had done so almost one and a half years later, on February 5, 2020. In the intervening period, there was no impediment for the petitioner to file its claim for a refund. To address the issues, provisions were made to accept applications and returns manually. The window was open till 26.09.2019. The respondent also disputed the submissions that the petitioner was advised by the Jurisdictional GST Office to file a refund claim after filing the annual GST returns in Form 9 and obtaining the bank realization certificates.

The court held that if the taxpayer has made a bona fide attempt to make an application but was prevented from doing so on account of technical glitches or for any reason attributable to GST authorities, its claim for refund cannot be denied on account of delay.

Counsel For Petitioner: Aseem Chawla

Counsel For Respondent: Vijay Joshi

Case Title: M/S Sethi Sons (India) Versus Assistant Commissioner And Ors.

Citation: 2023 LiveLaw (Del) 1351

Case No.: W.P.(C) 4179/2022

Click Here To Read The Order