CBIC working to weed out duplicate notices

economictimes.indiatimes.com:

As per an internal assessment, there are about 10,000 cases where taxpayers have received notices from both the central and state GST authorities.

Courts have made adverse comments in many such cases of parallel investigations. The matter was discussed at a recent meeting of enforcement officials from the central and state GST departments, chaired by union finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman. «There are instances where both the Centre and states have issued notices or have started investigations in the same case. We are working on a detailed directive on that,» a senior official told ET.

According to provisions under the Central GST Act, where an official under the State GST Tax Act or Union Territory Goods and Services has initiated proceedings, no action should be initiated by any other official under the CGST Act. State GST laws also have similar provisions to avoid multiple litigation. «Accordingly, the authority which subsequently initiates the investigation will be bound to drop such proceedings,» said Rastogi Chambers founder Abhishek A Rastogi, who is arguing several such petitions before different high courts. «The primary objective behind these statutory provisions is to reduce multiple litigation and any action to defeat this objective can be subject to judicial review,» he added. The official cited earlier said state GST officials are still not using technology fully, but once the investigation record is uploaded in the system, it is easy to avoid duplicate notices.