Court of Appeal of the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka: A Division Bench of Vasantha Kodagoda and Arjuna Obeyesekere, JJ., dismissed an appeal filed against the Judgment of the Commissioner-General of Inland Revenue.
The petitioner had stated that he was a building contractor and his business was registered with the Department of Inland Revenue (the Revenue) for the payment of Value Added Tax (VAT). He had admitted that he had delayed the filing of the VAT returns due to which the Revenue had disallowed the claims he had made for VAT refunds. The Revenue had served the Petitioner a Certificate of Tax in default in a sum of Rs 11,137,283. Further, the petitioner had appealed and the penalty on the sum had been waived and the sum in default had been reduced to Rs 6,405,616. The revenue had filed a case against the petitioner in the district court to recover the specified sum. The petitioner stated that he had faced many difficulties while carrying out several projects in 2009 in the district of Mannar and that he was discriminated by public servants on the basis of his ethnicity due to which payments due to the Petitioner for work had been delayed disrupting the smooth functioning of his business which is why the petitioner had made an application to the revenue. The Court after going through the application observed that even though the petitioner had explained the difficulties faced but was unable to produce any document in support of his facts and it was concluded that an exemption cannot be granted to him aggrieved by which the petitioner had appealed to the Commissioner-General of Inland Revenue but his appeals had been rejected, thus the instant application, as well as a Writ of Mandamus compelling the Revenue to grant an exemption, was filed.
The Court while dismissing the appeal explained that there was considerable delay in invoking the jurisdiction of this Court as the application was filed almost six years after the appeal was rejected, it observed that the Petitioner had not offered any explanation for the delay and further the petitioner was not alleging that the decision of the Commissioner-General of Inland Revenue was illegal, thus the application deserves to be dismissed. [Hitibandara Attapattu Mudiyanselage Ananda Parakrama Kumara Aigama v. Nadun Guruge, CA (Writ) Application No: 108 of 2019, decided on 02-12-2019]
