Case Law Details
Union of India Vs. M/s Ind-Swift Laboratories Ltd (Supreme Court)
Brief Facts- M/s Ind-Swift Laboratories Ltd, the Respondents had filed a Writ Petition before the Hon’ble Punjab & Haryana High Court against the order of the Settlement Commission wherein it was inter alia held that interest on CENVAT credit wrongly availed shall be payable from the date of availment till the date of payment. The Respondents prayed before the High Court to quash the order. The High Court allowed the Writ Petition and held:
• Rule 14 of the CENVAT Credit Rules, 2004 (“Credit Rules”) has to be read down to mean that interest is payable on the CENVAT credit from the date the said credit has been wrongly utilized and not from the date it is availed.
• It can be inferred that interest cannot be claimed from the date of wrong availment of CENVAT credit from a conjoint reading of Section 1 1AB of the Tariff Act and Rule 3 and 4 of the Credit Rules.
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reply to central excise for wrong notice issue to correct credit cenvat
reply letter formet to central excise
This order is going to trouble many Companies. In any company, the person who is posting entries in the RG23 registers is not a CA and there is every possibility of his making such mistakes. Suppose he takes wrong credit of Rs. 1 crore and it gets detected after a year (normally such detections take place at the time of audit), then the Company has to pay an interest of Rs. 18 lakhs and the poor fellow who is responsible for this might be getting around 2-3 lakhs per annum and will definately lose his job.
SC is known for taking practical view critically analising various Acts and Rules, but somehow in this case, they have gone by the words mentioned in the rules without going into the merit of the case or whether any advantage has been accrued to the company.
The observations are related to “ how to read (or read down??) a statutory sentence & interpret a sentence as existing in the statute.
But, the real issue is, whether the sentence, in fact , to be specific, whether the word “OR” is in the RIGHT place. If the discussion was centered around this, may be, logic would have prevailed.
The decision appears on Language viz. English, ie how to interpret a sentence with “OR”
The question still remains – whether with “OR” in the present place in the sentence, is logical or not. I Don’t think the SC decision answers that question.
The credit taken under the CENVAT Credit Scheme relates to duty already paid by the raw material suppliers. The credit taken by the recipient-manufacturer is actually utilised only when debited towards duty on the final products. Merely by taking a wrong credit inadvertently, the assessee has not availed any monetary benefit.