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SC Halts Attempt of Auditor General’s Office to Raise Additional Customs Duty

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October 5: The Supreme Court has issued an interim order to the Office of the Auditor General not to implement its decision to seek additional customs duty from the Department of Customs for the time being. The auditor general’s office had written to the customs department to raise additional customs duty from goods imported into the country arguing that the current revenue collection had shown discrepancies. Lawyers privy to the recent development informed New Business Age that the apex court has been time and again issuing interim orders in this regard on nine different writ petitions filed against the move of the Office of the Auditor General.

The Office of the Auditor General had asked the Department of Customs to raise customs duty from different companies stating that there were discrepancies in revenue collected from them. Following the instructions from the auditor general’s office, the Department of Customs had written to the concerned companies to pay the customs duty.

The companies had filed separate writ petitions at the Supreme Court arguing that the auditor general’s office did not have the rights to set the rate of customs duty.

The companies filing the writ petitions include CG Electronics, Triveni Business Company, Him Electronics, JN Electronics, Vega Digital Electronics among other companies.

The letter sent to the companies by the Department of Customs had asked the companies to pay the customs duty within seven days in cases where there were discrepancies. It had also warned to revoke the license of the companies if they did not comply with its instructions.

The letter stated that the companies were liable to pay 20 percent customs duty as they had only paid other taxes instead of the customs duty.

However, the petitioners claimed that they had cleared all the customs duty under various sub heads but the Office of the Auditor General marked those sub heads as discrepancies.

In the initial hearing, the apex court ruled that the determining the discrepancies of the customs clearance did not fall under the jurisdiction of the Office of the Auditor General.

A single bench of Chief Justice Gopal Prasad Parajuli ruled that there were various levels of mechanisms to solve the disputes related to customs duty between the concerned stakeholders and the Department of Customs, which holds quasi-judicial powers regarding the issues. 

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