Custom, Excise & Service Tax Tribunal
Wonder Reality Pvt Ltd vs C.C.E. & S.T.-Vadodara-I on 14 August, 2015
CUSTOMS EXCISE & SERVICE TAX APPELLATE TRIBUNAL, West Zonal Bench, Ahmedabad ^^^ Appeal No. : ST/10087/2013-SM [ Arising out of OIA-PJ-354-359-VDR-II-2012 Dated 22/11/2012 Passed by Commissioner of Central Excise and Service Tax-VADODARA-I] Wonder Reality Pvt Ltd : Appellant(s) Vs C.C.E. & S.T.-Vadodara-i : Respondent (s)
Represented by :
Appellant(s) : None Respondent (s) : Shri S.K. Shukla (Authorised Representative) For approval and signature :
Mr. P.M. Saleem, Hon'ble Member (Technical) 1 Whether Press Reporter may be allowed to see the Order for publication as per Rule 27 of the CESTAT (Procedure) Rules, 1982? No 2 Whether it should be released under Rule 27 of CESTAT (Procedure) Rules, 1982 for publication in any authoritative report or not? No 3 Whether their Lordships wish to see the fair copy of the Order? Seen 4 Whether Order is to be circulated to the Departmental authorities? Yes CORAM :
Mr. P.M. Saleem, Honble Member (Technical) Date of Hearing / Decision : 14/08/2015 ORDER No. A/11250 / 2015 Dated 14/08/2015 Per : Mr. P.M. Saleem, When the matter is taken up for the hearing on date, none appears for the appellants. There is no request for adjournment. The Learned Authorised Representative submits that number of opportunities have been granted to the appellants and when the matter came up on 05/06/2015, this Honble bench had granted one more opportunity as a last chance and adjourned the matter to 03/07/2015 and had directed Registry to issue notice.
2. It is observed from the records that the notice issued has been returned by Postal Authorities stating premises locked. On perusal of records, it is seen that the plea of the Appellants is to set aside the OIA which had upheld the penalty imposed on the appellants by the Adjudicating Authority.
3. Heard the Learned Authorised representative and examined the submissions of the Appellants especially the grounds of Appeal. The basic contention of the Appellants is that Commissioner (Appeals) has not appreciated the facts and circumstances of the case and has not applied his mind and has issued a non-speaking order and the penalty imposed on the Appellants is unjustified and unsustainable.
4. However, a perusal of the OIA reveals that the commissioner (Appeals) has examined the circumstances of the case and has taken a conscious decision to uphold the penalty imposed by the Adjudicating Authority on well reasoned grounds. For better appreciation, the relvant portion of the OIA is reproduced below:-
(11) Now the issue that remains to be discussed is whether they have been able to make out any case for reduction in the amount of penalty imposed on them. The Government of India for last two decades or so has been consciously moving towards simplification of both indirect as well as direct tax laws and reduction in duty rates to usher in a taxpayer friendly tax regime. In indirect taxes, both in Central Excise and Service Tax complete faith has been placed in the tax payer and majo0rity of procedural requirements earlier required to be met by Central Excise assesses have been done away with. Law has been considerably simplified. Audit of an assessee has been made a major tool for the Departmental officers to detect loss of revenue by way of short payment etc. for Audit, Desk Review is one of the main tools to determine the modalities for carrying out effective audit of an assessee. All the appellants are registered assesses and as admitted by them, they have been filing their returns regularly and following other requirements of law and procedures as laid down. Therefore, it does not lie in their mouth to say that they presumed that the documents were to be kept ready and produced at the time of audit. The letters of Audit are absolutely unambiguous in their request and it is expected of an old assessee to know the importance of Desk Review for a proper Audit. It can be easily suspected that they were fully aware of the importance of the Audit team having these documents in advance to conduct a thorough audit and they wanted to avoid giving full disclosure of required details to Audit team to handicap them in carrying out their job properly. Their lapse can only be considered deliberate since all the documents asked for are such which are readily available with any assessee. In any case time of 15 days is more than sufficient to supply these documents. In case they needed extra time for any reason, they could have very well requested for extension of time. None of the appellants has chosen to do so. A case of deliberated delay has to be dealt with suitably and no leniency is called for. Coming to the quantum of penalty, only a penalty of Rs. 200/= per day of delay has been imposed. In todays high cost economy with a high rate of inflation, an amount of Rs. 200/= per day for this kind of delay is really speaking very nominal amount of penalty. Obviously, this has encouraged the appellants to merrily ignore the requests of Audit team. I, therefore, find no justification whatsoever to grant the appellants any relief by reducing the amount of penalty any further.
(12) In view of the above discussions, I hold that the appellants have caused avoidable delay in submitting the data called for by the Audit section. I also find no merit in their contentions and hold them in-eligible for waiver of penalty under Section-80 of Chapter V of Finance Act, 1994. Further I find them liable for penalty under Section 77(1)(c) of Finance Act 1994 and that there is no justification for reduction in the amount of penalty. Hence, I do not find any reason to interfere with the orders dealt with in this appeal.
5. In view of the above, we find no reason to interfere with the OIA. The appeal is therefore dismissed.
(Operative portion dictated and pronounced in the Court) (P.M. Saleem) Member (Technical) Abhishek ??
??
??
??
2