A S BANKA ADVISORS

If your business is sitting on a GST first-appeal order from 2018, 2019, or 2022 that has gone nowhere, you have 66 days to make a decision. After June 30, 2026, that order is final.

Notification S.O. 4220(E) under Section 112(1) of the CGST Act gave every taxpayer a one-time runway to take pending First Appellate Authority orders and Revisional Authority orders to the GST Appellate Tribunal. The catch: the runway only covers orders communicated before April 1, 2026. The window closes June 30, 2026.

This article is not a re-statement of the notification. It is the decision framework we are walking our clients through this month, and the pitfalls that can quietly turn a winnable appeal into a write-off.

Three Questions Every Founder and CFO Must Answer This Week

The technical guide is on our research site. The practical question for any business is whether to spend the working capital and management attention to file. Three questions sharpen that decision.

1. What is the merit grade of each order? Not every legacy order is worth chasing. A weak-merits dispute with Rs 50 lakh of confirmed tax means Rs 5 lakh of cash blocked at the Tribunal stage on top of whatever sits at the Section 107 stage. If the merit grade is weak, the cash is better deployed elsewhere.

2. What is the cumulative cash hit? Tribunal pre-deposit is 10 percent of disputed tax, capped at Rs 20 crore each for CGST and SGST. Penalty-only disputes need 10 percent of penalty, no cap. Crucially, the deposit is in addition to the Section 107 deposit your company already made. Payment must come from the Electronic Cash Ledger only. Input tax credit cannot be touched. For most MSMEs and Series A startups, the surprise is the cash gating, not the percentage.

3. Are there parallel writ petitions to clean up? If you filed a High Court writ petition against the same order in 2019 because GSTAT did not exist, the Bench will most likely now ask you to take the Tribunal route. Filing the GSTAT appeal first and seeking writ withdrawal is the cleaner sequence. Waiting for the Bench to dispose of the writ risks landing past June 30, 2026 with no remedy left.

What This Means for Your Startup or MSME

If you are a founder, the time to ask your tax team is now, not in May. We are seeing three categories of clients on this work:

• Single-state operations with one or two pending orders. Straightforward portfolio, but the cash hit can still surprise. Plan funding to the cash ledger by mid-May.
• Multi-state businesses with multiple GSTINs. Cash ledger credit is state-specific. You cannot move cash across states. Each first-appeal order also needs its own APL-05 with its own deposit. Volume planning matters.
• Cross-border services and e-commerce sellers. Place-of-supply disputes go to the Principal Bench, New Delhi, regardless of where the order was passed. Other matters go to the State Bench. Confirm bench jurisdiction early so the appeal is not filed in the wrong place and bounced.

The Errors That Get Appeals Rejected

From the GSTAT advisories already circulating in the practitioner community, five drafting errors are showing up repeatedly. Copy-pasting Section 107 grounds verbatim, raising fresh factual grounds the Tribunal cannot admit, mismatched amount-in-dispute against the pre-deposit, photocopies of the impugned order rather than certified copies, and missing CIN of the pre-deposit challan in the form. Each of these triggers maintainability objections and burns the timeline. Any one of them on June 28 is a disaster.

The Working Calendar We Recommend

For an internal compliance team or an external CA practice, the working calendar that avoids last-week firefighting is roughly:

• This week (April 25 to May 2): Portfolio audit per GSTIN, decision matrix of appeal versus accept, bench jurisdiction confirmed.
• May 3 to May 16: Aggregate pre-deposit estimate, cash flow planning with the CFO, draft APL-05 grounds in parallel.
• May 17 to May 31: Document assembly, certified copies of impugned orders, portal registration per appellant.
• June 1 to 15: Electronic filing batch one, acknowledgments, pre-deposit reconciliation.
• June 15 to 30: Reserve for queries and corrections only. No new filings.

The internal deadline should be June 15. The final two weeks are damage control time, not filing time.

Download the Full Carousel

For the complete walk-through including the eight-step filing checklist, the pre-deposit table, and the common drafting errors, you can download the carousel PDF here.

Need Help with Your GSTAT Portfolio?

A S Banka Advisors Private Limited assists businesses, CA firms, and tax heads with first-appeal portfolio assessment, pre-deposit structuring, and APL-05 drafting before the June 30, 2026 deadline. Schedule a Strategy Session to talk through your appeal options.

Disclaimer: This article is general advisory in nature based on publicly available notifications and rules in force on April 25, 2026. It is not a legal opinion. Notification S.O. 4220(E) was issued on September 17, 2025 under Section 112(1) of the CGST Act, 2017. Pre-deposit requirements are governed by Section 112(8). Verify current Tribunal procedure and bench-wise jurisdiction at efiling.gstat.gov.in before acting.