Case Law Details
BT (India) Private Limited Vs Union of India (Delhi High Court)
Delhi High Court held that the taxing authorities would be bound by the view already taken and it would in any case be impermissible for them to take contrarian views with respect to an identical set of facts. Accordingly, refund granted in earlier occasions has to be granted currently as based on identical set of facts.
Facts- The petitioner impugns the order passed by the second respondent and in terms of which its applications for refund of unutilized CENVAT credit have come to be negatived. The refund claims were lodged in respect of the quarters pertaining to October 2014 to December 2014, January 2015 to March 2015 and April 2015 to June 2015. These applications which were dated 29 September 2015, 23 December 2015 and 29 March 2016 respectively were made on the ground of the input services having been utilized by the petitioner in connection with ‘export of services’. The services in question being Broadcasting, Business Support, IT Software and Management, Maintenance or Repair services.
Conclusion- In any case, the mere usage of the expressions ‘determine’ or ‘satisfy’ would, in our considered opinion, not amount to expanding the nature of the authority which the second respondent could have exercised while evaluating an application for refund. Once the self-assessed return of the petitioner and in terms of which its claim of refund and of being ineligible to service tax had attained finality and had not been reassessed or questioned, the refund was clearly liable to be granted automatically.
At the stage of consideration of the application for refund, it would be impermissible for the second respondent to question whether the services rendered by the petitioner amounted to an “export of service” or even dwell upon issues which related to its principal claim of not being liable to pay service tax.
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