The appellant/assessee is a distributor of mutual fund units and receives commission from mutual fund companies or asset management companies. The commission received by the appellants from the said companies stand taxed by the authorities below on the ground that they have provided Business auxiliary services to the mutual fund company. The appellant/assessee submits that it is recipient of such services, which is liable to pay service tax in terms of rule2(1)(d)(vi) of Service Tax Rules, 1994.
In respect of exports made from 14-5-2009 till 6-7-2009, the grant of the refund would be governed by the conditions under the previous Notification No. 41/2007, dated 6-10-2007. For the remaining period, refund would be governed by the new Notification No. 17/2009, dated 7-7-2009. The conditions prescribed in the two notifications are somewhat different. The precedent notification in force till 6-7-2009 had a condition that the storage and warehouse is exclusively used for the purpose of storage or warehouse of the export goods. However, there is no such condition in the successor notification applicable from 7-7-2009.
Before the date when CENVAT Credit Rules, 2004 had come into effect i.e.10.09.2004, CENVAT credit was available under Cenvat Credit Rules, 2002 Service Tax Credit Rules, 2002 . Service Tax Credit Rules, 2002 allowed to take cenvat credit of input service falls in the same category of taxable service as that of output service up to 13.05.2003. However wef 14.05.2003 these rules had been amended and cenvat credit of any input service could be taken.
In this case, the focus of the appellant’s activity in organizing short term courses on the subject relating to the Forestry, Water Resources Management, Environment, for the officers of Indian Forest Service and other organizations i.e. improving the skills and knowledge level of the persons of various organizations attending the courses and as such, there is no activity of the appellant, which can be called rendering advice, directly or indirectly, in connection with management of any organization.
It was held that till the decision in the case of ITC Ltd., all the decisions were in favour of the respondents and therefore invoking suppression or mis-declaration etc. for confirmation of demand is not in order. Further, I also take note of the submission made by the ld. Counsel that even the original adjudicating authority has taken a view that the failure on the part of the assessee is acceptable as a bona fide error and cannot be attributed to be wilful intention to evade tax. In view of the above discussion, appeal fails on the ground of limitation alone and I am not going into merits since appeal can be rejected only on this ground. Appeal filed by the Revenue as well as the Cross-objection filed by the respondent get disposed of.
Appellant is not simply a provider of output service but also a manufacturer of the excisable goods. The appellant contended that till 28-2-2008 for the manufacture of final products the service of Goods Transport Agency remained an output service and, therefore, Cenvat Credit was permissible to be utilized for payment of service tax upto 28-2-2008.
Explanation in Rule 6(1) does not make any provision as to which rate of tax will apply in situation like the one at hand (whether that on date of receipt of value or that on date of providing service). This explanation says that the service provider need to pay tax only on that portion of value for which service tax has been provided. In the instant case the Appellant paid tax on the full value received.
On verification of the records, we find that the details submitted by the applicants on 14.05.2007, does not cover the amount of tickets sold prior to 01.05.2006 for the journey carried out on or after 01.05.2006. We find that this is a suppression of fact on the part of the applicants prima facie therefore, the extended period of limitation has rightly been invoked. We further find that there is no dispute on the liability of service tax.
On a perusal of the definition of ‘Business Auxiliary Service’ as it stood during the material period, we are of the prima facie view that the appellant was functioning as a commission agent for AAI by collecting PSF for AAI and remitting the collections to them. It is not in dispute that the collection charges at the rate of 2.5% on PSF
we find that the appellant’s claim that they have produced some records and the documents, indicating that the income mentioned in the balance sheet may not be totally out of the income as a recovery agent is borne out from the Chartered Accountant’s certificate and adjudicating authority has recorded the same in the submissions made by assessee. It is also seen that the adjudicating authority has recorded that the appellant has produced a Chartered Accountant’s certificate. Suffice to say that the adjudicating authority should have given a finding on this issue, we are of the view that the entire issue needs to be re-considered by lower authority. We also find that the issue involved in this case also needs to be appreciated from the factual matrix, as regards the receipts indicated in the balance sheet of the appellant and the certificate issued by Chartered Accountant to that extent. It our opinion, this exercise is better left to the adjudicating authority to appreciate all the evidences available and that may be produced by the appellant.
