Facts: Notice issued to legal representative of deceased sole proprietor to recover tax for the period when the proprietor was alive.

Issue: Whether legal representatives of a deceased assessee can be subjected to recovery of tax after death of assessee in absence of specific provision in the statute?

View: Term “assessee” was defined in present tense as a “person who is liable to pay duty of excise. Therefore, only a living person could be an assessee. When the Central Excise Act, 1944 does not contain any machinery to assess the legal heirs of a dead natural person, there is nothing which can be said to be “payable” to Government.  

Held: Tax cannot be recovered from the legal representative of deceased assessee in absence of specific machinery provision in the statute permitting this.  (CA No. 5802 of 2005 dt 29 -7 2015)

Editorial  : Section 93 of the CGST and SGST Acts contain a specific machinery provision for assessing the legal representatives of deceased assessee in respect of tax payable by the assesse and the quantum of liability  depend on as to whether the legal representative have continued the business of the deceased proprietor or discontinued the same upon his death.

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