Arrest and Bail Under Service Tax - CBEC Issues Instructions
TIOL-DDT 2193
19.09.2013
Thursday
BOARD has now released the guidelines for arrest and bail under Service Tax
Now, in the Service Tax Circular also, they have mentioned the citation of 1997 (1) SCC 416, for the DK Basu case.
Board instructs, "Every Commissionerate should maintain a Bail Register which will have the details of the case, arrested person, bail amount, surety amount. The money /instruments /documents received as surety should be kept in safe custody. The money should be deposited in the treasury. The other instruments/documents should be kept in the custody of a single nominated officer. It should be ensured that the instruments/documents received as surety are kept valid till the bail is discharged.”
Do they still keep money in the treasury?
Circular No.171/2013-Service Tax, Dated: September 17, 2013
Arrest and Bail Under Customs - CBEC Issues Instructions
IN yesterday's DDT 2192 we had mentioned, "Similar instructions are to be given for Customs and Service Tax and maybe they are in the pipeline.”
Board has now released the guidelines for arrest and bail under 'Customs'.
Yesterday's DDT also mentioned, "The Board Circular wants the field to follow the guidelines of the Supreme Court in the case of D. K. Basu Vs State of West Bengal, but Board has not mentioned where the case is available or what the instructions are.”
Now, in the Customs Circular, they have mentioned the citation of 1997 (1) SCC 416, for the DK Basu case but how many officers in the field can access SCC?
CBEC Circular No.38/2013-Customs, Dated: September 17, 2013
Exemption from Safeguard Duty and Anti Dumping Duty for Imports under DFIA
NOTIFICATION No. 98/2009-Cus dated 11.09.2009, exempts materials imported into India against a Duty Free Import Authorisation (DFIA) from the whole of the duty of Customs leviable thereon which is specified in the First Schedule to the Customs Tariff Act, and from the whole of the additional duty, safeguard duty and anti-dumping duty leviable thereon.
Now the Government has amended this notification to restrict the exemption of safeguard duty and anti-dumping duty.
With effect from 17th September 2013, the exemption from safeguard duty and anti-dumping duty shall not be available in case materials are imported against an authorisation that has been made transferable on or after the 18th April, 2013 by the Regional Authority.
With effect from 17th September 2013, in case the imported materials are transferred with the permission of Regional Authority, and where such permission is granted on or after the 18th April, 2013, the importer shall pay an amount equal to the safeguard duty and anti-dumping duty leviable on the material so imported and transferred, together with interest at the rate of fifteen per cent per annum from the date of clearance on import of the said materials.
Notification No.45/2013-Customs, Dated: September 17, 2013
Service Tax Exemption for Uttarakhand
GOVERNMENT has exempted the taxable services of renting of a room in a hotel, inn, guest house, club, campsite or other commercial place meant for residential or lodging purposes and Services provided in relation to serving of food or beverages by a restaurant, eating joint or mess provided to any person in the State of Uttarakhand during the period 17th September, 2013 to 31st March, 2014.
The Reason: The recent floods and landslides have caused extensive damage in the State of Uttarakhand and have adversely affected the life of the common man in the state. There is a need to provide support to ensure sustenance for the local population by revival of the hospitality industry.
Will exemption to ONLY these two services suffice when the fact of the matter is that everything was washed away and the "hospitality industry” has to be rebuilt from scratch?
Ad-hoc Exemption Order No1/1/2013, Dated: September 17, 2013
Service Tax - Chief Commissioners directed to ensure clearance of pending Registration Applications
A PIB Press Release says,
All the Chief Commissioners of Central Excise and Customs and Director Generals Service Tax/Systems of Central Board of Excise and Customs (CBEC) have been asked to take stock of all pending registration applications for service tax and ensure that they are cleared by 23rd September 2013. Earlier the Chief Commissioners were asked to closely monitor registration applications as pending applications represent blocked revenue. Some complaints have been received in the Ministry about delays in the processing of applications for new registrations.
Accordingly, these directions have been issued today to all the Chief Commissioners of Central Excise and Customs and Director Generals Service Tax/Systems concerned. They have been asked to send their report as per the prescribed format to the Director General Service Tax at Headquarters electronically by 23rd September, 2013 in this regard.
An applicant for Registration is a new entrant into your fold - shouldn't you welcome him or should you scare him away?
Service Tax - Over 3 Lakhs Temporary Registrations
THE CBEC in a letter to the Chief Commissioners and Commissioners on 1.7.2013 informed that 3,00,733 temporary registrations migrated from SACER to ACES and 6,707 temporary Registrations were taken in ACES. The Board informed the Chief Commissioners that there is no authority in law to have a temporary Registration and the Board wanted the Chief Commissioners to ensure that all temporary registrations are converted to PAN Based registrations on priority.
New Companies Act - Old Sections Not Applicable
98 Sections of the new Companies Act have been brought into force by a notification dated 12.9.2013.
There is a doubt whether the provisions of the Companies Act, 1956 corresponding to the 98 sections would continue to apply or not.
Ministry of Corporate Affairs clarifies that with effect from 12.09.2013, the relevant provisions of the Companies Act, 1956, which correspond to provisions of 98 sections of the Companies Act, 2013 brought into force on 12.09.2013, cease to have effect.
So, you have two Acts operating simultaneously - the old one minus the 98 sections and the new one with the 98 functional sections!
MoCA Circular No16/2013, Dated: September 18, 2013
ACES Woes
WE got this mail from a concerned Netizen. He had already sent this to his Range, division and commissionerate offices.
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This is to bring to your notice various difficulties faced while filing of service tax return for the period October12 to March 13. Following is the brief description of various discrepancies and we request you to kindly consider the same and rectify it.
1. One major problem is that when we are uploading the XML utility, the next day it shows as been rejected. You shall be amused to know that if we choose to view the ST3 return for the same period for which the XML is rejected, it shows as filed. But the assessee on viewing the rejection message of XML, keeps on trying to upload a return which is already FILED.
2. Another problem which has been persistent is that the challans are being rejected by the ACES vide which the payment was made online. The site shows that 'Following Challans does not exist in our database” !!!
3. When we go on to take out the print of the return filed, many a times one or two services don't show up in the return whereas the total of the particulars filled match at the end.
4. On adjusting the prior period advances, the system wants us to enter the total amount of that challan through which the current period liability was adjusted. Now what if only a part of that challan was deposited as advance and the rest was adjusted against that period's liability. The system denies such filling of information.
5. On adjustment of a prior period arrear through CENVAT of that period, the system is asking for the challan details of such CENVAT utilized !!! Now from where do we get a challan for CENVAT utilization?
6. The response of the ACES helpdesk is as usual slow as anything. We got a response from them after 5 calls and 15 days wait. Amusingly the day we got a reply was the last date of return and the solution they gave was to refill the return and file it again (we had already done that a number of times)!!!!
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Fiscal Discipline - Tighten Your Belts -Fin Sec - No Creation of new posts; no filling up of posts vacant for more than year
THE Government is apparently reeling under a fiscal crisis and they want small cogs to plug the big holes. The Finance Secretary has announced a slew of measures for fiscal prudence and economy with immediate effect.
Cut in Non Plan Expenditure: For the Fiscal 2013-14, every Ministry/Department shall effect a mandatory 10% cut in non plan expenditure.
Seminars and Conferences: 10% cut - No meetings and conferences in five star hotels.
Purchase of vehicles: Purchase of vehicles is banned until further orders, except against condemned vehicles.
Travel: All officers are to travel in economy class only for domestic travel, except officers in the Apex Scale who may travel in executive class.
Creation of Posts:
(i) There will be a total ban on creation of Plan and Non-Plan posts.
(ii) Posts that have remained vacant for more than a year are not to be revived except under very rare and unavoidable circumstances and after seeking clearance of Department of Expenditure.
Will this mean that promotions and cadre review in the Revenue Departments are off? Many of the vacancies are more than a year old and they cannot be filled up now. In a recent Report to Parliament, the Public Accounts Committee commented on cadre review, "The DoPT has now shifted the onus for delay in approval of the same to the economy instructions issued by the Department of Expenditure. The Committee feel that the purpose of any economy instruction should be to ensure that the outgo from the Government's non-plan expenditure is minimised. Such restrictions do not hold good for a department like the Department of Revenue which is designed to augment the revenue for the Government.”
Finance Secretary's OM No. 7(2)/E.Coord/2013, Dated: September 18, 2013
SEZ - Policy to regulate carrying on recycling of plastic scrap or waste
THE Department of Commerce has prescribed the Policy to be followed by the units in SEZs carrying on recycling of plastic scrap or waste. Some features of the policy are:-
Import of plastic waste/scrap shall be permitted only as per the approved capacity of the Letter of Approval issued to a SEZ unit.
The description/definition of the plastic waste/scrap for this purpose would be: "Plastic scrap/ waste constitute those fractions of plastics generated by various plastic processing operations or those fractions generated in the production process of plastics in a plant, which have not been put to any use whatsoever and as such can be termed as virgin or new material which can be recycled into viable commercial products using standard plastic processing techniques but without involving any process of cleaning, whereby effluents are generated."
PET bottle waste/scrap shall continue to be freely importable as hitherto.
As per the Water (Prevention & Control of Pollution) Act, 1974 and the Air (Prevention and Control of Pollution) Act, 1981, plastic processing units are required to obtain Consent to establish and Consent to operate from the State Pollution Control Board concerned.
Before the clearance of the plastic waste/scrap, all imported consignments of such plastic waste/scrap shall be subjected to scrutiny and testing of samples.
Department of Commerce No.C.6/10/2009-SEZ, Dated: September 17, 2013
SEZ - Policy to regulate functioning of Worn and Used clothing units
THE Department of Commerce has prescribed the Policy to be followed by the units in SEZs carrying on reprocessing/recycling of used clothing: Some features of the policy are:-
Each consignment of used clothing imported by unit shall be accompanied with a certificate from the exporter/agency in which it was generated regarding dis-infection and fumigation of the containers from an agency licensed in the state of origin of worn clothing along with import documents.
The units should fulfill the export obligation criteria including NFE as per provisions of this Policy. No broad banding of unrelated products shall be allowed for this purpose.
To ensure that used clothing reprocessing units in SEZ fulfill their export obligations, in addition to meeting their NFE obligation, all such units would be required to ensure that certain minimum percentage of the unit's annual turnover is physically exported out of the country.
All applicable laws, rules, regulations etc., pertaining to environmental and other areas as amended from time to time, shall be strictly complied with by all units in SEZs carrying on recycling of used clothing.
Department of Commerce No.D.6/35/2012-SEZ, Dated: September 17, 2013
Jurisprudentiol – Friday's cases
Service Tax
Mere extraction of entire provisions of Section 65(19) of the Finance Act does not fulfill requirement of a Show Cause Notice - Such infirmity is incurable - Show Cause Notice quashed: CESTAT
IT is very easy to issue Show Cause Notice in service tax cases. All you have to do is reproduce the provisions of the definition of a particular service and raise a demand on the income asking the assessee to show cause as to why the service tax should not be demanded with interest and penalties, preferably under extended period, when the normal period is over.But in this case, the Tribunal was not kind enough to take such notice into cognizance and quashed the same.
Income Tax
Whether advertisement expenses, which were considered by Revenue as revenue expenditure, were rightly disallowed merely because in books of account it was considered as deferred revenue expenditure - NO, rules HC
THE issues before the Bench are - Whether the advertisement expenses, which were considered by the Revenue as revenue expenditure, were rightly disallowed merely because in the books of account the same were considered by the assessee as deferred revenue expenditure; Whether the provision made by the assessee for warranty for after-sales services is to be considered as contingent liability and not allowable as expenditure and Whether when at the relevant time as per law assessee has deducted tax at source but paid the same in subsequent year, no disallowance can be made as out of two conditions as mentioned in section 40(a)(i) ‘the tax has not been paid' or ‘deducted' one condition ‘not deducted' do not exist. And the verdict goes against the Revenue.
Central Excise
Notfn. 11/97-CE amending Notfn. 67/95-CE to provide for exemption to intermediate products utilized in manufacture of goods supplied under exemption to UN or International Organization in terms of Notfn. 108/95-CE is to be considered clarificatory in nature as it corrects an anomaly - Appeal allowed: CESTAT
NOTIFICATION No. 108/95-CE dated 28.8.95 exempted all goods falling under the Schedule to the CETA, 1985 when supplied for the official use of United Nations or International Organisation or for the projects funded by United Nations or an International Organization and approved by the Govt. of India.
Rule 57C of the CER, 1944 prevailing during February 1997 provided for disallowance of Modvat credit when final product was exempted from duty. However, exception was made in respect of supplies made in terms of Notification No. 108/95-CE dated 28.8.95.
See our Columns Tomorrow for the judgements
Until Tomorrow with more DDT
Have a nice day.
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