Transitional Credit A Fight To Retain My Property

In It is known to every reader of this article that “lexprospicit non-respicit”, which means that ‘The Law looks forward and not backward’. We are in a period where law is made to look backward whenever the courts read it favourable to the taxpayers and against the Government. Retrospective amendments, in the recent times, have become a weapon with the Government to overcome any judicial pronouncement against the Government. Needless to state, such retrospective has been a matter of challenge, whilst there is no wrangle that the Legislature does have the right to promulgate laws retrospectively.

- Adv Sherry Samuel Oommen

At times, one does wonder whether the actions of the bureaucracy are in effect a display of what one would call, the “Nabob of Cluelessness”. To put it differently, “Heads, I win, Tail, you loose”, is yet another a highminded aphorism that would well articulate the actions of the Government in the amendments effected on the subject of transitional credit. Interestingly, this issue continues to boggle industry even as the famed law “Goods & Services Tax” (“GST”) approaches its fourth anniversary. It is no secret that the views of even the executive have changed by the day raising questions on the very intent of this new law, apart from introducing differing interpretations on the subject.