Taxpayers can withdraw court cases and approach GST Tribunal for speedier outcomes

Taxpayers can withdraw their GST-related cases filed in High Courts and the Supreme Court and lodge them with the upcoming GST appellate tribunals so as to speed up their outcomes, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said in the Lok Sabha on Tuesday. The Parliament’s Lower House subsequently passed amendments to the central GST law aimed at operationalising the tribunals at the earliest.

Taxpayers can withdraw their GST-related cases filed in High Courts and the Supreme Court and lodge them with the upcoming GST appellate tribunals so as to speed up their outcomes, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said in the Lok Sabha on Tuesday. The Parliament’s Lower House subsequently passed amendments to the central GST law aimed at operationalising the tribunals at the earliest.

Ms. Sitharaman also indicated that every State will get two benches of the tribunal, which would include one in the State capital and the other in key commercial centres based on States’ inputs. The minister was responding to MPs’ remarks during the debate over the Central Goods and Services Tax (Second Amendment) Bill, 2023 which aligns the eligibility and age norms for members and the President of the Appellate Tribunals with the Tribunal Reforms Act of 2021.

The Lok Sabha also cleared the Provisional Collection of Taxes Bill, 2023, which seeks to rein in speculative trading activity by giving immediate effect to impositions or hikes in customs and excise duties.

“Now that amendments are being moved for setting up the GST Appellate tribunals, I would like to inform that the taxpayer is at liberty to withdraw from the Hight Courts and the Supreme Court and go to the tribunal that is being set up so that their cases can be speeded up,” she said, referring to new tribunal benches that will come up in States with an Appellate in Delhi.

Noting concerns about the glitches or difficulties faced by tax payers and the issue of multiple tax rates and the need to simplify them for easing compliance, Ms. Sitharaman said the rationalisation of rates is part of a larger exercise being undertaken by the GST Council.

“A member from Andhra Pradesh has raised quite a few issues and the fact that there are eight rate slabs. First of all, on rate rationalisation, there is a Group of Ministers which is formed within the GST Council. It has had a few sittings,” she noted.

“But because the chairman of the Committee was the former Chief Minister of Karnataka, and now that there’s a change of government in Karnataka, the committee chairman’s name will also have to be relooked at, and the committee reconstituted, and so on. So that work of rate rationalisation is the larger exercise that is being undertaken by the GoM of the Council,” Ms. Sitharaman added.