Hyderabad: Exhorting GST authorities to exercise caution and deeper examination before authorizing arrest of businessmen for tax evasion, Justice Ujjal Bhuyaan of the Supreme Court on Saturday said the reasons “you have to suspect a person cannot be equated with the reasons to believe”.
The extreme action of arresting a person should be backed by strong reasons to believe that the person was an evader and the same should be recorded in writing, he said.
The judge, who is considered an expert in tax laws, was addrressing the National Tax Conference organized at Federation of Telangana State Chamber of Commerce and Industries Bhavan here as a chief guest.
“I should flag off two issues which I think are relevant and contemporary. One relates to arrest under Section 69 of the Central Goods and Services Tax (CGST) Act, 2017, and the other relates to provisional attachment under Section 83 of CGST Act. Sub-section(1) of Section 69 says that where the commissioner has reasons to believe that a person has committed any offence specified in sub-section(1) of Section 132 of the CGST Act, which is a punishable offence, he may by and order authorize any officer of central tax to arrest such person”, he said.
Sections 69 and 83 of the CGST Act and the corresponding provisions under the State GST enactments have conferred drastic powers in the hands of the revenue.
