It is one of the more distressing letters a family can receive. A father or a husband ran a proprietorship — a trading firm, a small unit, a contractor's business — and died two, three, sometimes five years ago. The shop has long since closed. Then a demand arrives from the GST department, addressed to him by name, for a tax period when he was alive. Sometimes it is a notice in Form DRC-01; sometimes the family learns of it only when a recovery notice reaches the bank.
The instinct is either to pay, or to ignore the notice because the person named in it is no longer alive. Both are wrong, in different ways. The correct position sits between them, and two things must be held apart to see it: the validity of the proceeding, and the survival of the liability.
What the courts have been saying
On 24 August 2026, a Division Bench of the Jharkhand High Court (Acting Chief Justice Tapabrata Chakraborty and Justice Deepak Roshan) decided Jai Maa Durga & Co. v. Principal Commissioner [W.P.(T) No. 6343 of 2026]. The proprietor had died on 17 January 2019; his legal representative had applied for cancellation of the registration and filed the death certificate. The department nonetheless passed an assessment order and an appellate order in the dead proprietor's name. The Court set both aside, observing that an order made against a dead person would be a nullity — while expressly leaving the department free to pursue its claim against the legal representative in accordance with law.
For a taxpayer in Uttar Pradesh the more directly relevant authority is the Allahabad High Court's Division Bench in Amit Kumar Sethia (Deceased) v. State of U.P. [Writ Tax No. 917 of 2025, decided 2 April 2025]. There, a Section 73 notice demanding over ₹21 lakh was issued nearly two years after the proprietor's death in April 2021. The Court held that Section 93 of the CGST Act deals only with who bears the liability; it does not authorise a determination of tax against a dead person in the first place. The notice must go to the legal representative before any determination can be made at all.
The rule, in one line: a show cause notice or demand order issued in the name of a person who was already dead on the date of issue is not a curable irregularity — it is void, because there is no person before the authority to answer it. The remedy is to have it set aside, not to reply to it as though it were valid.
What Section 93 actually provides
Section 93 of the CGST Act, 2017 is titled "Special provisions regarding liability to pay tax, interest or penalty in certain cases". Its first sub-section deals with death, and it draws a distinction that matters enormously to a family:
- Section 93(1)(a) — if the business is continued after the death by the legal representative or any other person, that person is liable to pay the tax, interest or penalty due from the deceased.
- Section 93(1)(b) — if the business is discontinued, whether before or after the death, the legal representative is liable to pay out of the estate of the deceased, and only to the extent to which the estate is capable of meeting the charge — including where the tax was determined only after the death.
Two consequences follow. The liability does not die with the proprietor. But where the business was shut down, the heir is not personally answerable for the whole demand: the ceiling is the value of what was actually inherited — a defence to be pleaded and proved, and often the most valuable point in the file.
The defect in a notice addressed to a dead man buys time and a fresh hearing. It does not extinguish the tax.
The department can begin again — properly
Families sometimes read a favourable order as the end of the matter. It usually is not. The Madras High Court in V. Damayanti v. The Superintendent of GST and Central Excise [W.P.(MD) No. 10000 of 2026, decided 16 June 2026] held that even where the business had been discontinued and no notice issued in the proprietor's lifetime, fresh proceedings may be initiated against the legal heir under Sections 73, 74 or 74A read with Section 93 — the liability in such a case still being limited to the inherited estate.
But the department must do it properly. The Rajasthan High Court in Chotu Devi v. Union of India [D.B. Civil Writ Petition No. 11576/2026, decided 24 July 2026] quashed orders passed one day after a sole proprietor's death, holding that liability under Section 93 cannot be fastened on a legal heir without an independent notice to that heir and a proper opportunity of hearing — a reading that sits naturally with Section 75(4), which requires a hearing wherever an adverse decision is contemplated. The heir therefore gets a real, fresh opportunity to contest the demand on its merits, and loses it by ignoring the notice.
The compliance side: what the family should do
Most of these disputes are avoidable. They arise because the registration is left standing, returns stop being filed, the portal keeps generating notices against a login nobody monitors, and the file matures into a demand. The statutory route is short and well documented.
Where an order has already been passed
If a demand order or recovery notice has already come in the deceased's name, the work is factual before it is legal. Set the date of death against the dates on the notice and the order. Check whether the department was ever informed — a death certificate filed with the cancellation application, a letter to the range office, an appearance by a relative are all part of the record, and were material in the Jharkhand case. Establish whether the business was continued or discontinued, since Section 93(1)(a) and Section 93(1)(b) lead to very different exposure; if discontinued, value the estate that actually devolved.
Timing then decides the forum. An appeal under Section 107 runs three months from communication of the order, extendable by one further month on sufficient cause. Where that period has lapsed — as it often has, because nobody was watching the login of a person who had died — the nullity point is ordinarily taken in a writ petition before the High Court, the route followed in each of the decisions above. In P.B. Sethi Plastics v. State of U.P. the Allahabad High Court quashed a Section 73 order in exactly that posture, after the appeal had been rejected as time-barred.
None of this is unusual work, but it is time-sensitive and record-driven, and far easier before a bank account is attached than after. Where a proprietorship has lost its proprietor and the GST file is still open, having the papers examined early — registration status, returns, notices sitting unread on the portal — is usually what separates a defect that can still be raised from a demand that has quietly become final.
A GST notice in the name of a proprietor who has died?
If a family business in Lucknow or elsewhere in Uttar Pradesh has received a show cause notice, a demand order or a recovery notice addressed to a deceased proprietor, Dixit Legal can examine the dates and the record, advise on the cancellation and succession filings, and settle whether the answer lies in an appeal or a writ petition.
Discuss your matter on WhatsApp → Or call +91 70809 16305