Tax litigation concerns disputes arising under the direct and indirect tax framework, including the Income-tax Act, 1961, the Central Goods and Services Tax Act, 2017, and the State GST legislation, the Customs Act, 1962, and the residual proceedings under the earlier central excise and service-tax regimes. Afentis Legal represents corporations, promoters, and individual assessees in assessment, adjudication, appeal, and the constitutional challenge of tax provisions, before the departmental authorities, the tribunals, the High Courts, and the Supreme Court of India. The practice covers both the substantive contest over liability and the procedural defence against recovery, penalty, and prosecution.
The firm’s positioning in this domain rests on the presence of former Indian Revenue Service officers with policy background in customs and indirect taxes, including experience of the GST rollout at the Ministry of Finance and the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence. This allows the firm to contest tax matters with an understanding of how assessments are framed, how demands are constructed, and where the department’s reasoning is open to challenge. Matters are approached as document-intensive disputes in which the record and the statutory computation determine the outcome.
Service Spectrum
- Representation in assessment, reassessment, and adjudication proceedings under the Income-tax Act and the GST and customs statutes
- Appeals before the Commissioner (Appeals) and the appellate authorities under the GST framework
- Proceedings before the Income Tax Appellate Tribunal (ITAT), the Customs, Excise and Service Tax Appellate Tribunal (CESTAT), and the Goods and Services Tax Appellate Tribunal (GSTAT)
- Tax appeals and references before the High Courts and Special Leave Petitions before the Supreme Court
- Writ petitions challenging reassessment notices, demand orders, and the constitutional validity of tax provisions
- Defence against penalty, interest, and prosecution under the tax statutes Challenges to provisional attachment, recovery, and coercive collection action
- Advisory work on classification, valuation, input-tax credit, and transfer-pricing exposure in the context of litigation
Firm’s Approach
The firm’s advisors’ background in the framing of customs and indirect-tax policy allows the defence to engage the department’s case on its technical merits — classification, valuation, credit eligibility, and the basis of the demand — rather than confining the contest to procedure. Where a demand is challenged for jurisdictional or constitutional infirmity, the firm’s writ strength allows the reassessment notice or the provision itself to be tested under Article 226. Matters carrying parallel enforcement exposure, such as customs offences or proceeds-of-crime allegations, are coordinated with the firm’s economic-offences and enforcement practice.