Powers of the C.B.E.C. to issue orders of classification of goods, Value under the Central Excise Act, 1944, Transaction Value, Salient features of the new valuation rules, aluation of goods manufactured on lob-work basis, Clarification issued on Levy of excise duty on readymade garments on the basis of Retail Sale Price (RSP), Value on basis of Maximum Retail Sale Price, Clarifications regarding Section 4A of the Central Excise Act,

The issue of transfer price affects various types of taxes. Under Custom Laws, special valuation branch examines the validity of the transaction value between associated enterprises. In Service Tax law, service tax has been imposed on import of service through reverse charge method and it is expected that Service Tax department would like to examine the value of services imported (or exported) to associated enterprises. In Income Tax, it is transfer price mechanism which takes care of this situation.

Since these services are provided free by the dealer on behalf of the assessee, the cost towards this is included in the dealer’s margin (or reimbursed to him). This is one of the considerations for sale of the goods (motor vehicles, consumer items etc.) to the dealer and will therefore be governed by Rule 6 of the Valuation Rules on the same grounds as indicated in respect of Advertisement and Publicity charges. That is, in such cases the after sales service charges and PDI charges will be included in the assessable value.

Many a times the manufacturer of goods (Central Excise assessee) provides other services to the buyer and charges an amount for those services provided. The services may be like transportation of goods to the buyer premises, transit insurance of the goods, interest charges for the credit given to the buyer, Installation of the goods in the buyer’s premises etc. It may happen that cost incurred by themanufacturer assessee in providing these services is much less than what is charged by the manufacturer assessee for these services. The question is whether excess charges collected by the manufacturer assessee should be included in assessable value of the goods under Section 4 of the Act?

In the present circumstances there are contradictory judgment of the Hon’ble apex court and in these circumstances judgment of the larger bench should be followed. In Commissioner v/s Aqua Pump Industries [1998 (102) ELT A64], 3 Judge bench of the apex court held that Dharmada amount is not includible in value and hence this decision is a binding precedent should be followed. In view of the above the author is of the view that Dharmada amount is not a part of the assessable value, notwithstanding the Circular of the Board.

It has been brought to the notice of the Board that some manufacturers of Motor Vehicles are getting complete Motor Vehicles manufactured by sending the Chassis of the Motor Vehicles to independent body builders for building the body as per the design/specification of the manufacturer. The practice followed is that the Chassis is transferred to the Body builder on payment of appropriate Central Excise duty on stock transfer basis and is not sold to them .