In this edition, we bring you, Part II of various shades of draft assessment orders and issue surrounding them. In this piece, we have dealt on the issues namely, can the DRP condone the delay in submission,  whether ITAT would have jurisdiction in case DRP rejects the submission because they are filed after time period and what would be the recourse for the assessee in case of non-condonation of delay by DRP?

Read more: SBS Wiki E Journal October 2021

The recent judgment of Honourable Supreme Court in the matter of Union of India vs. VKC Footsteps India Private Limited[1] is a bitter pill but much needed one. The said judgment serves as a foundation for the future of the goods and service tax litigation in the country. The much hyped belief ‘one nation, one tax’ needed a jolt and the same was served by the Honourable Supreme Court. In this piece, we would provide a detailed analysis of the issue, the history before the matter reached to Supreme Court, the verdict of Supreme Court and conclude the piece by contributing our view and the impact of the said judgment on the future cases.

Read more: The Saga of Refund of Input Services vis-à-vis Inverted Duty Structure - Supreme Court Decision in...

The concept of draft assessment order and final assessment order is an interesting concept to study under the Transfer Pricing (for brevity ‘TP’) Regulations. Under the old provisions of the Income Tax Act, 1961 (for brevity ‘ITA’), the concept of passing of draft assessment order was limited to transfer pricing matters and adjustment made in respect of a non-residents. Section 144C of ITA mandates the assessing officer to pass a draft of the assessment order in respect of an eligible assessee before passing the final assessment order. The objective of insertion of Section 14CC is to speedy redressal of the issue by a three-member forum called ‘dispute resolution panel’ (for brevity ‘DRP’) instead of single member forum of Commissioner of Income Tax (Appeals). Even though Section 144C was effective from October 01, 2009, the concept of draft assessment order is still a contentious issue at appellate fora.

While the issue surrounding the concept of draft assessment order under Section 144C is settling down, a new concept of draft ‘assessment order’, ‘final draft assessment order’ or ‘revised draft assessment order’ under Section 144B has come up with litigation at the judicial fora. In this article, the concept of draft assessment order under 144C and 144B has been dealt with in detail.

Read more: Various hues of Draft Assessment Orders – Section 144B and Section 144C

One of the main reasons that goods and services tax (for brevity ‘GST’) laws were introduced is to bring numerous indirect legislations under one single law to the extent possible. By doing this, the service tax law, excise law and value added tax law have repealed and subsumed into GST laws. Everyone was happy, because there is no requirement to understand, what is manufacture, what is goods, what is service, what is negative list, what is positive list and so on. Simply, the GST law promised, if there is a supply, there is a tax. However, that was so in the dream land and not in reality. We continue to face issues in different shapes and that was the only change, one can perceive.

In this article, we tried to write on the issues surrounding the job work. Before deliberating on the issues, we will take a look on the concept of job work under the GST laws. The expression ‘job work’ is laid down under Section 2(68) of CT Act[1] to mean any treatment or process undertaken by a person on goods belonging to another registered person and the expression ‘job worker’ shall be construed accordingly. Section 143 details the procedures pertaining to the job work, which we will deal at appropriate place. With the above in mind, let us now proceed to examine certain issues pertaining to job work.

Read more: Job Work - Certain Issues