The Tribunal held that since the amended proviso to Section 50(1) expressly provides that it shall be deemed to have been substituted with effect from 1st July 2017, the appellant is entitled to refund of the excess interest paid on the ITC component.
The GSTAT Visakhapatnam Bench has allowed appeals filed by a taxpayer seeking refund of excess interest paid under Section 50 of the CGST Act for FY 2017-18 and 2018-19, holding that the retrospective amendment restricting interest liability to the portion of tax paid by debiting the electronic cash ledger is applicable from 1st July 2017 [Padala Satyanarayana Reddy v. Joint Commissioner GST Appeals Guntur & Ors].
The Vice President, Bhaskar Reddy Vemireddy (Judicial Member), noted that Parliament amended Section 50(1) by Section 112 of the Finance Act, 2021, whereby the substituted proviso expressly provides that it "shall be deemed to have been substituted with effect from the 1st day of July, 2017." The appellant had discharged tax partly through ITC and partly through the electronic cash ledger, and had calculated interest on the entire tax liability without restricting it to the cash component.
The original authority had rejected the refund claim on the ground that no notification giving effect to the amendment was available at the relevant time. The Tribunal held that this reasoning was not sustainable in light of the express retrospective statutory deeming provision and allowed the appeals.
2026-juristway.com-2979-GSTAT(Visakhapatnam)-GST | GSTAT, Visakhapatnam | APL/3/VSK/2026 | 14.10.2026
