Taxation and fiscal

Tax disputes in India proceed through a layered structure of departmental proceedings, appellate authorities and courts, and a business's exposure typically develops in stages: a notice, an assessment, and, if unresolved, an appeal.

GST disputes

Goods and Services Tax questions arise across show cause proceedings, assessment disputes, denial of input tax credit and anti-profiteering proceedings, each governed by its own procedural timeline under the Central and Integrated Goods and Services Tax Acts. A show cause notice is the point at which a taxpayer's position is first tested, and the response filed at that stage frames the dispute for everything that follows.

Appeals

Where a dispute is not resolved at the departmental level, appeal lies to the GST Appellate Authority, then to the Appellate Tribunal, and beyond that to the High Courts, each with its own procedural requirements and, in several cases, a pre-deposit condition before an appeal can be heard. The appellate route is often the stage where the underlying legal question (a classification dispute, a rate dispute, an input tax credit interpretation) actually gets decided, rather than the original assessment.

Departmental defence and advisory

Summons, notices and investigation proceedings initiated by tax and revenue departments require a coordinated response, since an inconsistent position taken at the investigation stage can affect the merits of a later appeal. Separately, indirect tax advisory addresses how a transaction should be structured to achieve tax efficiency within the bounds of applicable law, which is a prospective exercise distinct from defending an assessment already raised.

Direct tax and customs

Income tax questions (assessment disputes, withholding tax positions and the tax treatment of a particular transaction) proceed through their own appellate structure under the Income-tax Act, culminating before the Income Tax Appellate Tribunal and the courts. Customs classification and valuation disputes raise a further set of questions specific to cross-border trade. What a business has to decide, across each of these, is whether to contest a position at the departmental stage or preserve the point for appeal, since the two strategies are not always compatible.