Ananda Vikatan Productions Pvt. Ltd. Vs Commissioner of GST & Central Excise (CESTAT Chennai)
The appeal before the Customs, Excise and Service Tax Appellate Tribunal Chennai challenged an order upholding the demand of service tax, interest, and penalty for the period 2005–06 to 2009–10. The appellant was engaged in producing television programmes and selling advertisement space or time. During verification of records of certain broadcasters, it was noticed that the appellant had received payments for recorded commercial productions of a Tamil serial, of which the appellant was the copyright owner, after dubbing the serial into other languages. The department viewed the activity of production and assignment of copyright to broadcasters as a taxable service under “TV or Radio Programme Producer Service” and confirmed the service tax demand along with penalty under Section 78 of the Finance Act, 1994.
The appellant contended that copyright is intangible property qualifying as “goods” and that permanent transfer of copyright amounts to a sale liable to VAT, not service tax. It was argued that once a transaction is a deemed sale, it stands excluded from the definition of “service”. The appellant also asserted that it produced the programme on its own and did not produce it on behalf of any broadcaster. Reliance was placed on earlier Tribunal decisions holding that service tax under programme production service applies only where a programme is produced on behalf of another person.
