The Supreme Court last week emphasised that circulars and instructions issued by the customs and excise boards are no doubt binding on the authorities but when the Supreme Court or a high court declares the law on a disputed question, the courts’ view shall prevail. The court reiterated the view last week in the case, [...]

The Supreme Court has held that freight and insurance charges are not to be taken into account in determining the value of goods for imposing excise duty. A Bench headed by Justice S B Sinha, while dismissing the Commissioner of Central Excise’s appeal, asked the (Excise) Department to pay Rs 25,000 to a manufacturer of [...]

The new foreign trade policy, which is being prepared by the commerce ministry, will be aligned with the Goods and Services Tax (GST) only after implementation of this indirect tax mechanism. The new policy is likely to be announced by the next government at the Centre by mid-2009, while the GST is likely to be [...]

A very piquant situation has arisen after the judgement of the Supreme Court in the Ratan Melting case. One of my ex-colleagues who is known to be as knowledgeable as he is serious, rang me up with a lot of concern that this judgement now authorises the CBEC to file appeal in the Supreme Court [...]

The Central Excise and Service Tax Department has launched a pilot project for the implementation of Automation of Central Excise and Service Tax (ACES) in the Bhubaneswar-II Commissionerate. ACES is a new centralised and Web-based software application that aims to automate all core processes of excise and service tax. The pilot project was launched at [...]

The Government has been concerned about the impact of the global financial crisis on the Indian economy and a couple of steps have been taken to deal with this problem.   On the monetary side, the RBI has sought to pump in sufficient liquidity into the banking system to enable banks to meet the requirements [...]

The excise department has registered a significant rise in number of defaulters in the last four months of the current financial year in the state. The rising default has added to the woes of excise department, which has already registered a fall in growth of excise income. As per data available with the central excise [...]

The Supreme Court has dismissed the appeal of Unison Electronics (P) Ltd against the ruling of the Customs, Excise & Service Tribunal (CESTAT) that denied excise duty exemption for goods which carried brand names of other companies. Under a central government notification, small scale industries were provided exemption in excise duty, but not those units [...]

Supreme Court has set aside the judgment of the Kerala The Supreme Court has set aside the judgment of the Kerala high court and held in the case, Atul Commodities Pvt. Ltd vs Commissioner of Customs, that import of second hand photocopy machines before January 2005 required no import licence according to the circulars of [...]

Circular No. 883/3/2009-CX F.No.267/31/2008-CX-8 Government of India Ministry of Finance Department of Revenue (Central Board of Excise & Customs) New Delhi, dated 26th February, 2009.   Subject: Levy of cess on sugar manufactured out of cess paid raw material/ input- regarding The Sugar Cess Act, 1982 provides that “There shall be levied and collected as [...]