Case Law Details
IBM India (P) Ltd. Vs Commissioner of Customs (CESTAT Bangalore)
CESTAT Bangalore held that section 149 of the Customs Act, 1962 allows amendment of a Bill of Entry after the clearance of the goods only on the basis of documentary evidences which were in existence at the time the goods were cleared for home consumption. In absence of the same, the amendment is unjustified.
Facts- The appellant imported software “SPO” for 5691 XXX CATIA Hybrid Design indicating the value of the software as US$ 21,49,953.610. The said imported software was sold to M/s. Tata Technologies Ltd. The appellant then realised that they had erroneously declared value of imported software to be ₹10,27,30,275/- as against ₹1,91,24,415/- and filed an appeal to reassess their goods and seek refund of the excess duty paid by them. The Commissioner (Appeals) noted that the appellant being registered as an Accredited Client Programme (ACP) and the imports made by such importers are normally facilitated through Risk Management System (RMS); in other words, the goods were cleared without examination based on the transaction value declared in the Bill of Entry and there is no dispute that there was any irregularity in the assessment made at the time of import. The only defense of the appellant was that there was a clerical error committed by them where higher value was declared which resulted in excess payment of customs duty and hence, they sought to reopen the assessment and rectify a clerical error in terms of provisions of section 149 and 154 of the Customs Act 1962.
The Commissioner (A) observed that section 149 allows amendment of a Bill of Entry after the clearance of the goods only on the basis of documentary evidences which were in existence at the time the goods were cleared for home consumption; while Section 154 deals with only clerical mistakes. He held that since, in this case, no such error was committed, Section 154 was ruled out and Section 149 could not be invoked by the appellant. Therefore, in the absence of any verifiable means to determine the intrinsic value of the imported goods that were not available for examination, the request for reassessment of goods was rejected.
Conclusion- Held that that for invoking Section 149, relevant documents should have been in existence at the time of import but in this case, obviously the invoice was revised based on the request of the appellant and the veracity of the genuineness of this invoice could not be verified since the goods were not examined at the time of import nor were available for examination.
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