Appealing to the GST Appellate Tribunal: the Time Limit, the Pre-Deposit, the Fee, and the Date That Has Already Passed

For seven years the sentence at the foot of a GST order — "an appeal lies to the Appellate Tribunal" — pointed at a tribunal that did not exist. It exists now. It has a portal, 31 State Benches, and, on the day this was written, 86,193 appeals already e-filed on it.

It also has a closed door behind most of those appeals. The date the Government notified for the backlog, 31 July 2026, has passed. The portal's own banner still advertises it as though it were live. This is what the position actually is, what an appeal costs, and what is left for someone who has missed the date.

First, the clock that applies to you

Section 112(1) gives three months from the date the order is communicated — or a date the Government notifies, whichever is later. That second limb, inserted from 1 August 2024, is what the entire backlog ran on.

• Order communicated on or after 1 May 2026. The ordinary clock. Three months from communication, and nothing has lapsed.
• Order communicated before 1 May 2026. The notified date was 31 July 2026, and it is gone.
• Departmental applications under section 112(3): orders passed before 1 February 2026 ran to 31 July 2026; orders passed on or after that date get six months from the date the order was passed.

Section 112(6) lets the Tribunal admit an appeal three months after the period expires, "if it is satisfied that there was sufficient cause". Applied to 31 July 2026 that points at the end of October 2026. No official document computes that date — it is our reading of the section, and sufficient cause still has to be shown and accepted.

The token, and why 29 September matters

When the July date approached, the Tribunal added a relief valve. Order No. 156/2026 of 10 July 2026 let an appellant record an intent to file by 31 July, with bare minimum details, and take a token:

"the appellant can use that token and complete the actual filing within a period of 60 days from the date of token generation."

The order says a token obtained on or before 31 July "will be deemed to be sufficient compliance for the purpose of filing appeals within due date". The advisory attached to it is blunt about the other side: "The token shall stand lapsed after 60 days of its generation and no filings will be accepted under the said token after such date."

Sixty days from 31 July 2026 is 29 September 2026. A token taken on the last permitted day dies then. Tokens taken earlier have already gone. If a token is sitting in your file, it is worth more than anything else on your desk this week.

What the appeal costs before it is heard

Two payments, and they are not the same thing.

The pre-deposit, under section 112(8). Ten per cent of the remaining tax in dispute — not interest, not fine, not fee, not penalty — in addition to the ten per cent already paid to reach the first appellate authority under section 107(6). It is capped at ₹20 crore under the CGST Act. Anything the appellant admits has to be paid in full under section 112(8)(a). For an order that demands a penalty with no tax, a proviso inserted from 1 October 2025 asks for ten per cent of that penalty.

Once it is paid, section 112(9) deems recovery of the balance stayed until the appeal is disposed of. That is the point of paying it.

The fee, under rule 110(5). ₹1,000 for every ₹1 lakh of tax, input tax credit, fine, fee or penalty determined in the order appealed against, minimum ₹5,000, maximum ₹25,000. An order that determines no demand at all costs ₹5,000. A rectification application under section 112(10) carries no fee, and the Department pays none.

The two payments go to two different places. The pre-deposit is paid on the GST portal, and the GSTAT portal fetches the figure from GSTN, where it cannot be typed over — the only way past it is the exemption or correction route, used where a higher court has excused the deposit or the fetched figure is wrong. The fee is paid on the GSTAT portal, through Bharatkosh.

Filing is electronic, and only electronic

The appeal is FORM GST APL-05 under rule 110, filed online. GSTAT FORM-01, which reads like the obvious candidate, is the interlocutory application form; it is not the appeal.

• Rule 115 of the GSTAT (Procedure) Rules, 2025 requires every appeal to be uploaded on the portal, and all notices and communications to be issued electronically.
• The manual escape hatch is gone. Rule 110's proviso allowing a paper APL-05 where the Registrar permitted it was omitted with effect from 22 September 2025. Guidance that still tells you to file five paper sets with the Registrar is describing a rule that no longer exists.
• A provisional acknowledgement issues immediately in Part A of FORM GST APL-02A, and its date is the date of filing. But the appeal "shall be treated as filed only when the final acknowledgement, indicating the appeal number, is issued" in Part B, after defects are removed. Where the order is not on the common portal, a self-certified copy has to go up within seven days.
• One appeal per person. Rule 18(3)(b): "each aggrieved person will be required to file a separate appeal, and common appeals or joint appeals shall not be entertained". Where one order in appeal covers several orders in original, there are as many appeals as there are original orders.
• The Registrar's instructions of 10 March 2026, which run to 31 December 2026, list what must be attached: the show cause notice, the order in original, the order in appeal, the statement of facts and the grounds — with the pre-deposit and the court fee paid, and the authorisation or vakalatnama uploaded.

Documents go up as PDFs, up to 20 MB each, signed with a digital signature or Aadhaar e-sign.

Who hears it, and how fast

• Appeals where the tax, credit, fine, fee or penalty is within ₹50 lakh and no question of law arises may be heard by a single member, with the President's approval. Everything else goes to a Judicial and a Technical Member.
• Anything involving place of supply is heard only by the Principal Bench at New Delhi.
• The Tribunal may refuse an appeal where the amount involved is within ₹50,000. That is a discretion, not a threshold.
• Section 113(4) asks the Tribunal to decide "as far as possible" within one year, and no party gets more than three adjournments.

The undertaking you may have forgotten

While the Tribunal did not function, Circular No. 224/18/2024-GST let a taxpayer pay an amount equal to the pre-deposit and file an undertaking with the jurisdictional officer promising to appeal when the Tribunal opened. That stayed recovery.

The circular is equally clear about what happens next: if the appeal is not filed within the timelines of section 112 once the Tribunal is operational, "the remaining amount of the demand will be recovered as per the provisions of law". Anyone holding one of those undertakings against an order communicated before 1 May 2026 is now past the notified date, and the stay rests on nothing.

The tribunal that did not exist was, for years, a reason nothing moved. It is now the reason things move fast: 30,000 appeals were filed in the fifteen days before the last deadline, peaking at 5,500 a day.

Where this comes from

The Central Goods and Services Tax Act, 2017, sections 107, 109, 112 and 113, and rules 110 and 111 of the CGST Rules as substituted by Notification No. 12/2024-Central Tax and amended by Notification No. 13/2025-Central Tax; the Goods and Services Tax Appellate Tribunal (Procedure) Rules, 2025, G.S.R. 256(E) of 24 April 2025; the Department of Revenue's notification of 30 June 2026 notifying 31 July 2026; GSTAT Order No. 156/2026 of 10 July 2026; the Registrar's instructions of 10 March 2026, extended on 14 May 2026; and Circular No. 224/18/2024-GST. Bench numbers are from S.O. 3048(E) of 31 July 2024; the GSTAT website's own table counts sittings as well, which is why other counts are higher. The date to which condonation runs is our reading of section 112(6). For the first appeal that comes before all of this, see what is locked in GSTR-3B and IMS.