Anti-profiteering

🎯 How This Word Works in UPSC Writing

Section 171(1) of the CGST Act, 2017 requires that any reduction in the rate of tax, or any benefit of input tax credit, be passed to the recipient by a commensurate reduction in price, which makes it a rare instance of tax law reaching directly into pricing. The institutional history is the examinable part, because the function has moved three times: the National Anti-Profiteering Authority examined complaints from 2017, the Competition Commission of India took the work over, and the Principal Bench of the GST Appellate Tribunal assumed jurisdiction from 1 October 2024. Notification 19/2024-Central Tax of 30 September 2024, issued on the GST Council's recommendation under the proviso to Section 171(2), then closed the door to fresh applications from 1 April 2025, while cases already filed continue before the GSTAT Principal Bench. The sequence deserves attention: that sunset took effect months before the largest rate reduction in the tax's history, since the 56th GST Council meeting of 3 and 4 September 2025 collapsed the four slabs into 5 and 18 per cent with a 40 per cent demerit rate, effective for most goods from 22 September 2025. Section 171 remains on the statute book, but with no new applications entertained there is no live mechanism to compel pass-through of those cuts, which now rests on competition and consumer pressure instead. The design difficulty that dogged the regime throughout is also worth stating: the law never prescribed a methodology for computing the commensurate reduction, so adjudication proceeded case by case and firms could not know in advance what compliance required.