The Madhya Pradesh High Court has upheld the Rs 1.32-crore penalty slapped on a transporter that failed to provide details of vehicle carrying goods in the e-way bill generated by it. The penalty amount is higher than the value of goods at Rs 1.12 crore. Experts said the verdict would force transporters and businesses to consider the e-way bill system more seriously.
Pratik Jain, partner and leader – indirect tax, PwC, said: “This is a significant development and would empower the authorities across states to be more vigilant to scrutinise consignments. It becomes important for the businesses to put in place a strong process for e-waybill compliance.”
The GST Act requires taxpayers to intimate a common dedicated portal about the nature, origin and destination of goods being moved, if the value of the consignment is in excess of Rs 50,000. The portal then generates an e-way bill, which is required to be carried by the transporter.
In this case, the petitioner, which is engaged in multi-modal transportation of shipments, supply chain management and other allied services, argued that its e-way bill was incomplete because of technical glitches in the system. While the e-way bill had details of the consignment, it didn’t have the information about the vehicle carrying it.
The tax department countered the claim saying the if the petitioner had faced such an issue on the portal, he should have raised grievance against that. Also, the petitioner never raised any grievance about the purported technical error.