Delhi HC allows Bharti Airtel to rectify GST returns of ₹923 crores

New Delhi: The Delhi high court has allowed Bharti Airtel Ltd to rectify its Goods and Services Tax (GST) returns of ₹923 crores for July-September 2017. The government had said it did not permit rectification of the returns citing restrictions specified in a circular.

Bharti Airtel said in its plea, there had been excess payment of taxes mainly due to non-operationalisation of certain GST return forms and system- related checks which could have forewarned the petitioner about the mistake. Since there were no checks on the Form GSTR-3B (summary of monthly transactions), which was manually filled up by the company, the excess payment of tax went unnoticed, it added.

The company had excess input tax credits at its disposal but could not utilise it in adjusting against the final tax liability due to regulatory and technology-related uncertainties at the time of India’s transition to the new indirect tax regime in 2017.