The Madras High Court on Thursday restrained the Commercial Taxes Department from demanding a penalty of ₹11.50 lakh from music composer J. Harris Jayaraj for the delayed payment of an entry tax of an equal amount for a Maserati GranTurismo S Coupe car imported by him for his personal use in 2010. Justices R. Mahadevan and Mohammed Shaffiq granted the interim injunction on a writ appeal preferred by the composer and adjourned the case by three weeks for further hearing. Vijayan Subramanian, counsel for the appellant, told the court that his client had imported the car in 2010 and sold it in 2012. In the meantime, when the Regional Transport Office refused to register the case without payment of entry tax, apart from the customs duty, the composer filed a writ petition in 2011 and obtained an interim order for registering the vehicle. The writ petition was pending for long and was dismissed only in 2018.
Subsequently, he received a recovery notice in 2019 warning him of severe consequences, such as attachment of his bank accounts, detaining of movable properties and civil arrest, under the Revenue Recovery Act, if he did not pay ₹13.07 lakh demanded by the Commercial Taxes Department.
The appellant filed yet another writ petition in 2019 challenging the recovery notice. A single judge of the court disposed it of in 2022, stating that the penalty could be levied only after January 29, 2019, and not before. Filing an appeal against the order, the appellant said he had paid the entry tax, but the Department was insisting on a penalty of an equal amount, too, without considering the COVID-19 pandemic period.
