51 Cos Challenge Profiteering Amount Interest Penalty at HC

The Delhi high court recently received petitioners arguing the issue of imposing interest on the companies having delayed payments on the amount accumulated through profiteering as per the national anti-profiteering authority (NAA) directed by the goods and services tax (GST).

However, it is to be noted that the provisions are there in the Central GST Act as a rule of levying interest within the profiteering provisions of GST but the legislation is still missing which needs the applicability to be proved.

Therefore the petitioners have argued that the missing provisions in the legislation does not give the powers of applicability of interest. A tax expert has said that “The moot point is whether interest is applicable in the absence of statutory provision.”

Around fifty-one companies have taken part in the petitioning of this rule which includes some fortune 500 companies like Subway Systems, Hindustan Unilever, Abbott, Johnson & Johnson, Philips, Acme Developers, Samsonite, Jubilant Foods, Nestle, Whirlpool, Samsung, Subway, Reckitt Benckiser and Patanjali.

The court has to take each and every petition within its perceive and thus made them as a single hearing. It would hear the petition on the coming November 8 2021.

The petitioners have went to say that the profiteering calculations are itself not sufficient to mark a particular amount on products and services and has objected over the provisions of the validity of anti-profiteering.

A tax expert argued that “There is an excessive delegation on various fronts and hence the issue is whether profiteering could be applicable in the absence of methodology and penalty can be levied when the statute got amended only from a specified date.”