Custom, Excise & Service Tax Tribunal
M/S. Aspinwall And Co Ltd vs Commissioner Of Central Excise And ... on 24 October, 2013
CUSTOMS, EXCISE & SERVICE TAX APPELLATE TRIBUNAL SOUTH ZONAL BENCH BANGALORE Final Order No. 26837 / 2013 Application(s) Involved: ST/Stay/27690/2013 in ST/27358/2013-DB Appeal(s) Involved: ST/27358/2013-DB [Arising out of Order in Original No.21/2013 dt. 03/05/2013 passed by Commissioner of Central Excise & Service Tax, Mangalore.] M/s. Aspinwall and Co Ltd Post Box No. 901, Kulshekar Post, MANGALORE KARNATAKA 575005 Appellant(s) Versus Commissioner of Central Excise and Service Tax - MANGALORE 7TH FLOOR,.TRADE CENTRE, BUNTS HOSTEL RD., MANGALORE, KARNATAKA 575003 Respondent(s)
Appearance:
Mr. Harish Bindumadhav, Advocate For the Appellant Mr. A.K. Nigam, Addl. Commissioner (AR) For the Respondent CORAM:
HON'BLE SHRI B.S.V.MURTHY, TECHNICAL MEMBER HON'BLE SHRI ANIL CHOUDHARY, JUDICIAL MEMBER Date of Hearing: 24/10/2013 Date of Decision: 24/10/2013 Copy forwarded to :
1.Commissioner of Central Excise and Service Tax-MANGALORE
2.The JCDR , CESTAT Bangalore.
3.Indirect Tax Bar Association CESTAT, Bangalore
4.M/s. Centax Publications(P) Ltd.
5.M/s. Company Law Institute of India (P) Ltd.
6.M/s. Taxindiaonline Dot. Com (p) Ltd. Bangalore.
7.M/s. Tax Man Allied Services Ltd New Delhi.
8.M/s. Easy Service Tax Online Dot Com P Ltd New Delhi.
9.M/s. Lawcrux Advisors P Ltd. Faridabad.
10.M/s. Mark Professional Services (P) Ltd.
11.Guard File.
Order Per : B.S.V.MURTHY Appellant is a CHA and service tax demand of more than Rs.3/- crores has been confirmed and penalties under various sections have been imposed on the ground that appellant should have included the charges recovered from their clients and paid to various authorities in the capacity of pure agent because the appellant could not show any evidence that the amounts were collected as reimbursements of payments made by them to various other service providers/statutory authorities.
2. The learned counsel submits that the Commissioner has accepted their submissions that they were acting as pure agent when they were paying payments of customs duty, port dues/landing dues, railway freight, etc. The only ground taken for disallowing the claim and demanding service tax is that the appellant could not provide relevant documents before the Commissioner. He submits that whole process of issue of show-cause notice and adjudication was completed within a period of four months and appellant did not get sufficient time to produce all these documents in view of the fact that the number of documents was large and value was also very high. Under these circumstances, he submits that now the appellant has all the documents ready and he would be able to produce and satisfy the Commissioner about the correctness of the claim that these amounts were collected as pure agent.
3. Under these circumstances, we consider it appropriate that the matter should be remanded as requested. Accordingly, the impugned order is set aside and the matter is remanded to the original adjudicating authority for fresh adjudication after giving reasonable opportunity to the appellants to present their case without expressing any opinion on any of the issues raised before us.
(Order dictated and pronounced in open court) ANIL CHOUDHARY JUDICIAL MEMBER B.S.V.MURTHY TECHNICAL MEMBER rv 2