Case Law Details
Balmer Lawrie & Co. Ltd. Vs Commissioner of Service Tax (CESTAT Delhi)
CESTAT Delhi held that profit on ocean freight charges cannot be termed as consideration for service and hence service tax is not leviable on the same.
Facts- The appellant was registered with the Service Tax Commissionerate for providing a comprehensive range of logistics services to their clients. They had service tax registrations for the other branch offices from where they provided various taxable services.
In order to provide services, the appellant entered a contract with Indian customers for transporting and delivering the cargo to the desired destination within India. The activities undertaken by the appellants are about loading, unloading, packing, and unpacking of cargo, services provided to the Custom House agents for handling containers or import cargo, transhipment of import cargo from international carriers, etc.
The responsibility of the appellants about import includes a collection of consignments from the foreign line and ensuring delivery of the same to the importer located in India. The officers of the Directorate General of Central Excise Intelligence, Kolkata developed intelligence that the appellants were evading service tax duty on cargo handling service. They were not discharging duty liability on a reverse charge basis as provided under section 66A of the Finance Act, 1994.
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