H & B Auto Repair Centre Pty Ltd and Commissioner of Taxation (Taxation)

The Administrative Appeals Tribunal (AAT) heard a dispute between H & B Auto Repair Centre Pty Ltd (the Applicant) and the Commissioner of Taxation (the Respondent) concerning the Applicant's claims for input tax credits (ITCs) under the Goods and Services Tax (GST) Act. The Applicant objected to amended assessments of its net amount for various quarterly tax periods between February 2016 and December 2017, which disallowed a significant portion of its ITC claims.

The primary legal issues before the Tribunal were whether the Applicant had discharged its burden of proving that the Commissioner's amended assessments were excessive or incorrect, and specifically, whether the Applicant was entitled to claim the ITCs in dispute for the relevant tax periods. This involved considering the time limits for claiming ITCs and the adequacy of the records provided by the Applicant to substantiate its claims.

The Tribunal reasoned that for the tax periods between 1 January 2016 and 30 June 2016, the Applicant's Business Activity Statements (BAS) were lodged more than four years after they were required to be submitted. Citing section 93-5(1) of the GST Act and relevant case law, the Tribunal held that the Applicant's entitlement to claim ITCs for these periods had ceased due to the late lodgement. For the subsequent periods between 1 July 2016 and 31 December 2017, the Tribunal found that the Applicant had failed to provide sufficient records to substantiate its ITC claims. The bank statements and other documents submitted were deemed insufficient to prove that the acquisitions were creditable, properly attributable to the tax periods, or that the GST amounts were verifiable.

Consequently, the Tribunal affirmed the Commissioner's decision under review. The Applicant was found not to be entitled to the disputed ITCs for the periods from 1 January 2016 to 31 December 2017, and had not discharged its onus to prove that the amended assessments were excessive or incorrect.