Timely Response to Notices – A Lesson Learned
We share an insightful incident that underscores the critical importance of timely responses to notices from tax authorities.
One of the assesses faced an unexpected challenge when he contracted COVID-19, forcing him to halt his business operations for six long months. This is in March 2020. Throughout this period, he continued to file his GST returns diligently. He resumed business after 6 months and started filing the returns, while March 20 return was filed on Nov 20.
Amidst the chaos, he inadvertently missed important communications from the GST department, which were served on the portal. Assesse was not a Tech Savy.
What department has done…
- Alleged that ITC claim was beyond 16(4) timelines served assesse with ASMT 10
- No response to ASMT 10, DRC 01 was issued.
- No response to DRC 01, DRC 07 was served.
- No response to DRC 07, SCN was issued under Sec 78
- No response to Sec 78 DRC 13 has been issued to Bank for blocking the money.
Assesse came to know about this fact only when the Bank has contacted stating this much amount would get blocked.
Readers would find department has done all the necessary things before blocking the account. While it is important to Note that all these were served electronically which the assesse is not aware.
If you are a corporate or tech savvy you think this would not happen to you, unfortunately It’s wrong, it would happen to you also.
Most of the times email ID on the GST portal is given of an employee’s / consultant and not changed even after they left. Sometimes corporate give a generic email of Info@xyz etc which is also not attended.
Impact of this, Time limit to file an appeal is lost and this money cannot be recovered, and this is a Financial Loss.