Bombay High Court quashes GST Authority’s improper SCN
MUMBAI : The Bombay Court has quashed the improper Show Cause Notice ( SCN ) issued to employees of Maersk Line India of Rs. 3731 Cr Demand assuming that the employees have benefitted from the transactions made by the company. The bench stated that issuing the SCN to the petitioner, who is only an employee, appeared to be a tactic aimed at intimidating and pressuring the petitioner.
The bench of Justice Firdosh P. Pooniwalla and Justice G.S. Kulkarni observed that “as to how such penal provision in Section 137 could be foisted against the petitioner, when the show cause notice is itself a demand cum show cause notice, is also quite intriguing, which in our opinion, also touches the very jurisdiction in issuance of such notice. This aspect is not explained by the respondents much less satisfactorily.
The court has considered the 4 petitions involving a common challenge and the facts were also similar. The petitioners in each of these petitions are individuals. They are employees of a shipping company, who have been foisted with a SCN under Section 74 of the Central Goods and Services Tax Act, 2017 whereupon a demand of Rs.3731,00,38,326/- towards penalty is being demanded from them being the tax amount stated to be defaulted by the employer.
