The assessee had reflected the service tax liability on account of service provided by him during the period April, 2007 to September, 2007 in the ST-3 returns filed with the department. The reason for delay in making payment had been sufficiently explained by the assessee in his reply, stating that due to sudden crash in the stock market, the main broker of whom he was the sub-broker, defaulted in making the payment. This had resulted in non-payment of service tax liability in time. The reason is bona fide in non-payment of service tax in time.
Prima facie coaching material has intimate connection with the commercial coaching provided by the assessee and the contents of the study material are relevant to the coaching to make the later fruitful and meaningful so that the enrolled candidates are benefited out of commercial coaching. There was no evidence to effect that these coaching materials are sold as text books by book sellers and no way useful to the enrolled students. So also there is no evidence to suggest that these coaching materials by any means enjoy exemption under law and not taxable.
Since the appellant prays that it has a case for consideration under Section 80 of the Finance Act, 1994 it is desirable to bring to record about the date on which liability arose, date of return ought to have been filed, date on which admitted tax liability should have been discharged and the date of discharge of duty liability. If these particulars neatly come out to record, that shall enable the authority to properly consider the plea of the appellant as whether it is entitled to the benefit of Section 80 of Finance Act, 1994.
Since the appellant is a charitable institution, can they be considered as a commercial training or coaching centre ? Here again the answer is negative. So long as the appellant imparts training or skill in any subject or field other than sports for a consideration, the said activity would come under the purview of commercial training or coaching. It is on record that the appellant is collecting substantial amount of fees from the students for imparting training. Merely because the appellant is registered as a Charitable Institution under the Income-tax Act, 1961, that does not entitle the appellant to claim exclusion from the ambit of service tax. Thus it is obvious that the appellant does not come under the exclusion clause of the definition of commercial training or coaching centre.
The appellants are actually implementing applications software like SAP, Oracle, people soft. They are also into upgradation of application software from existing release level to higher version. They are also specifically into running of electronic data processing centre, business of data processing, word processing etc. Even if there is any advisory role, the same appears to be limited only to the field of Engineering and the services would fall under the category of consulting engineers only.
Appellant has been issued with a show cause notice on 19.05.2004 for the demand of Service Tax liability for the period 16.11.1997 to 2.6.1998 on the ground that the appellant has received the services of goods transport agency/operator which is liable to pay service tax as per the retrospective amendment and has not filed returns and discharged Service Tax. On perusal of the show cause notice, we find that the show cause notice has been issued under section 73 of the Act for demand of service tax and consequent for the penalties and interest.
When the department wanted the tax liability of the assessee to be revised, it was incumbent on the appellate authority to record a clear finding and to spell out in quantitative terms what should be the correct tax liability of the assessee.
Even after the deletion of expression activities related to business from the definition of input services, the credit of Service tax paid on the sales promotion activities and on the services of sales of dutiable goods on commission basis would be admissible as credit. As such, it is the contention of the learned advocate that even after the activities related to business, stand deleted from the definition of inputs credit as per the Board’s Circular, the Service tax paid on commission on agent services would be available.
The assessee received ‘turnover charges’, stamp duty, BSE charges, SEBI fees and Demat charges contending that the same was payable to different authorities and claimed that the same is not taxable. But the revenue taxed the same on the ground that such receipt by stock broker was liable to tax. The revenue failed to bring out whether the turnover charges and other charges in dispute in these appeals received by assessee were commission or brokerage.
Adjudicating authority seeks to include the value of free supplied materials received by the appellant in the gross value of the services rendered by the appellant. It is seen that after inclusion of gross value, the adjudicating authority has not given the benefit of Notification No. 15/2004, dated 10/09/2004 in the form of abatement of 67%.
