M/s. Enmas Andritz Private Limited Versus Commissioner of GST & Central Excise, Chennai
Service Tax
2018 (9) TMI 295 – CESTAT CHENNAI – TMI
CESTAT CHENNAI – AT
Dated:- 31-8-2018
Appeal No. ST/302/2011 – Final Order No. 42328 / 2018
Service Tax
Hon'ble Ms. Sulekha Beevi C.S., Member ( Judicial ) And Hon'ble Shri Madhu Mohan Damodhar, Member ( Technical )
Shri Raghavan Ramabhadran, Advocate for the Appellant
Shri A. Cletus, Addl. Commissioner (AR) for the Respondent
ORDER
Per Bench
The appellants are engaged in providing consulting engineer service, transport of goods by road service, renting of immovable property service and intellectual property right service. During the course of audit, it was noticed that appellant had engaged into contracts for designing, supplying and supervising the erection and commissioning of Recovery Boilers. Such boilers are used for segregating and recycling the chemicals involved in paper pulp. The appellants received consideration
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ds supplied to Paper Mills and were acting as traders of goods.
2. During the course of audit of accounts, it was further noticed that they had availed CENVAT credit of service tax paid on input services such as:-
(i) Commission paid to agents for procuring the project orders for supply of Recovery boiler
(ii) Bank guarantee for advance of supply of materials / components – such advances were reduced proportionately from the invoices of the components and do not relate to rendering of registered taxable services
(iii) Clearing and forwarding charges for imported goods
(iv) Cargo handling charges
(v) Metal testing conducted on the raw materials meant for manufacture of components
(vi) Processing of components which does not amount to manufacture
(vii) Technical testing and inspecting of components supplied / to be supplied to the paper mills
(viii) Cargo contracts
(ix) Insurance paid on materials / components lying with sub-contractors
(x) Deputation of technical st
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t
(vi) Rent-a-cab service
(vii) Deputation of staff for office and
(viii) Advertisement charges
2.3 According to the department, the above input services were availed by the appellant during the course of trading activity and since trading activity is not a taxable service, the appellants are not eligible to avail credit on the above input services. It also appeared that they are not providing exempted service to claim benefit under Rule 6 of CENVAT Credit Rules, 2004. Therefore, the appellants are not eligible for credit of service tax to the tune of Rs. 76,90,088/- relating to the period April 2007 to March 2008.
2.4 Thus, it was observed that they have contravened the provisions of Rule 3 of CENVAT Credit Rules and had availed ineligible input credit to the tune of Rs. 3,22,07,53/- for the period April 2007 – 2008.
2.5 During the said period, they had utilized credit of Rs. 35,91,928/- towards discharging service tax liability and such utilization resulted in short-payment
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ers for design, supply and supervision of the erection and commissioning of Recovery Boilers. They further entered into sub-contracts with job workers for the manufacture of certain components to the Recovery Boilers. The appellant procures raw materials for manufacture of such components and sends the same directly to the job worker. The job worker avails input credit of the raw materials supplied. Upon completion of the manufacture of Recovery Boilers, the job workers directly clear these to the customer and raise invoices on the appellant for the job charges and the excise duty component. The appellant has availed input service credit on various input services. The department now disputes the credit availed on input services. The sole ground for disallowing CENVAT credit as alleged in the show cause notice is that the entire credit availed by the appellant is attributable to trading activity and is therefore ineligible in terms of Rule 3 of CENVAT Credit Rules, 2004. He submitted th
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the appellant to manufacture Recovery Boiler and clear the same to the customers on behalf of and under the direction of the appellant. Thus, the entire activity entails only manufacture and supply of recovery boiler and at no point of time, the appellant purchases the boiler as such and sells it to call it a trading activity. That therefore the entire premise on which the department has issued the show cause notice fails and therefore the disallowance of credit on the count that the appellant has used the input services for doing trading activity is without any basis.
3.3 It is also argued by him that trading is an exempted service with effect from 1.4.2011. The Hon'ble High Court of Madras in the case of Ruchika Global Interlinks Vs. Commissioner of Central Excise – 2017-VIL-323-MAD-ST has held that trading is an exempted service prior to 1.42011 as well and that therefore Rule 6 is applicable for reversing the proportionate credit availed on trading. In the present case, show cause
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contracts and clearing and forwarding charges for imported goods are also input services for procurement of raw materials to be used in the manufacture of Recovery Boilers. He relied upon the judgment of the Hon'ble Supreme Court in the case of Ramala Shahkari Chini Mills Vs. Commissioner of Central Excise, Meerut – 2016 (334) ELT 3 (SC) to argue that the word 'includes' used in the definition of input service cannot be interpreted in a restrictive manner.
3.4 The ld. counsel relied upon the decision rendered in their own case reported in 2017 (48) STR 261 (Tri. Chennai) wherein on similar set of facts, the input credit disallowed on Chartered Accountancy Service, Courier Agency Service, Manpower Supply Service, Telecom Service, Business Support Service,, Banking and Other Financial Service, Testing and Inspection Service were held to be eligible.
3.5 It is also argued by him that the demand to recover Rs. 35,91,928/- as short-paid duty on the ground that ineligible credit was utili
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Credit Rules, 2004. For this reason, para 5.0 has alleged that appellant have wrongly availed CENVAT credit in contravention of provisions of Rule 3 of the CENVAT Credit Rules, 2004 and in para 6, the amount of such wrong credit has been proposed to be recovered under Rule 14 of the CENVAT Credit Rules, 2004. He explained that the services viz. commission paid to agents for procuring project order, Bank guarantee for advance, clearing and forwarding charges for goods, cargo handling services, technical testing etc. are services related to procurement of raw materials etc. But the appellant is not registered as a manufacturer and is not paying excise duty on the Recovery Boilers. So the appellant cannot avail credit as a manufacturer. They are registered as output service provider for Consulting Engineer Service. He adverted to the definition of Consulting Engineer and stated that it involves giving technical advice and has nothing to do with procurement of goods. So these input servic
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elating to April 2007 to March 2008 amounting to Rs. 76,90,088/-. The total tax demand proposed is Rs. 3,22,07,534/- with interest thereon. In addition, a sum of Rs. 35,91,928/- has been utilized during the period April 2007 to September 2008 towards discharge of service tax liability which has also been sought to be demanded.
6.1 Ld. counsel has been at pains to convince us that these issues pertains to period prior to 1.4.2011 from which date trading was made a deemed exempted service. That nonetheless, even for the period of dispute the trading activity is required to be considered as an exempted service. To support this, he has relied upon the judgment of the Hon'ble High Court of Madras in Ruchika Global Interlinks (supra) to contend that the trading activity can be categorized as exempted service even prior to 1.4.2011. From the perusal of the said judgment, we however find that the Hon'ble High Court had only addressed the issue of apportionment as provided under Rule 6(3)(c) o
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iding output service'. As trading activity undertaken by the appellant is not taxable service, hence the appellant is not eligible to avail credit on the alleged / impugned input service. This being so, the appellants have clearly fallen foul of Rule 3 of the CENVAT Credit Rules, 2004 since that is the particular provision which lays down the types of duties or taxes or cesses suffered on input, input services etc. which alone can be availed as CENVAT credit. From the facts brought out in the show cause notice, it is evident that the impugned input services listed out in para 3.0 and 4.0 have all been availed in spite of the appellant having been involved in trading activity. Thus, there cannot be any credit that could be availed by the appellant ab initio and hence there is no need to examine the applicability of Rule 6 of the CENVAT Credit Rules, 2004 to their case. In any case, trading activity has been made deemed exempted service only with effect from 1.4.2011 and therefore we are
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ill not help the appellant. So also in the Single Member decision of the Tribunal in the appellant's own case reported in 2017 (40) STR 261 (Tri. Chennai), there is nothing forthcoming from the facts brought out in the order as to whether the input service was used exclusively for trading. There is no discussion in the said order as to disallowance of credit on account of credit availed on trading. On the other hand, the said decision has taken the view that the input services were essential to provide output service of consulting engineer and thus allowed the credit. Hence this case law is also of no help to the appellant.
6.4 In the event, we do not find any infirmity in that portion of the impugned order upholding the demand of wrongly availed credit to the tune of Rs. 3,22,07,534/- along with interest thereon. So ordered.
6.5 Coming to the demand of Rs. 35,91,928/- with interest in respect of alleged wrong utilization of CENVAT credit, since this being only a part of the total cr
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