Case Law Details
Suretex Prophylactics India Private Limited Vs Commissioner of Central Excise (Karnataka High Court)
In the instant case, the appellant has obtained registration under the provisions of Finance Act, 1994 in the category of service provider as “scientific and technical consultancy services”. As the entire taxable services rendered by the appellant for exporting outside India and on account of appellant not having any domestic service tax liability, the input service credit availed by it on the taxable input services, received by it remained unutilized. Hence, appellant sought for refund of this unutilized input credit under Rule 5 of CENVAT Credit Rules, 2004 by submitting 16 refund claims. Said applications came to be rejected as not having been filed within the limitation prescribed under Section 11-B of the Central Excise Act. While answering substantial questions of law (1), (3) & (4) herein above, we have already held that provisions of Section 11-B of Central Excise Act would be applicable though Section 11-B of the Act does not cover refund of Cenvat credit, notification No.5/2006 makes it explicitly clear that for the purpose of relevant date for computing one year prescribed under Section 11-B, it has to be determined by applying Rule 5 of Cenvat Credit Rules, 2004, necessarily the refund claims ought to have been filed within one year from the relevant date as specified in Section 11-B. In other words, time limit has to be computed from the last date of the last month of the quarter which would be the relevant date for the purposes of examining if the claim is filed within the limitation prescribed under Section 11-B or otherwise. The details of the refund claims insofar as it relates to 12 claims was on 03.01.2014 had been filed beyond one year from the last date of the last month of the quarters and as such, they were clearly time barred. Insofar as remaining 4 claims, matter has been remanded to the original authority, against which there is no appeal by the revenue. Hence, we answer the substantial question of law No.2 that tribunal was right in holding that the “relevant date for computation of time limit will be the end of the quarter” in which FIRC’s are received as per the extant notification No. 27/2012 – CE (NT) dated 18.06.2012.
FULL TEXT OF THE HIGH COURT ORDER /JUDGEMENT
CEA No.31/2017 came to be admitted on 08.08.2018. However, CEA Nos.32/2017 and 33/2017 were ordered to be posted along with CEA No.31/2017 since substantial questions of law had not been formulated.
2. We have heard the learned Advocates appearing for parties and formulated following substantial questions of law on 26.02.2020, which reads:
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