The Customs, Excise And Service Tax Appellate Tribunal, Chennai, set aside the rejection of refund claim for CENVAT Credit on Consulting Engineer Services Exported.
Facts
The appellant-assessee filed an application for refund of CENVAT Credit of Rs.32,42,592/- under Rule 5 of the CENVAT Credit Rules (‘CCR’ for short), 2004 on 05.07.2010, by declaring that the input services received by them have been utilized in the provision of output services namely, consulting engineer service, which have been exported without payment of Service Tax. It appears that the appellant had also declared that they had exported the above output service without payment of Service Tax to their foreign clients.
The appellant had also declared that they could not utilize the CENVAT Credit of Duty / Service Tax taken on inputs / input services used in providing output services exported without payment of Service Tax and consequently, they had taken input / input service credit to the extent of Rs.32,42,592/- for the provision of output service of Rs.21,05,01,428/- and further admitting that the input service credit remained unutilized since the output service in toto was exported without any domestic clearance.
Submissions
S. Viswanathan, Advocate, appeared for the appellant submitted that the appellant is an EOU / STPI exporting consulting engineer services and thereby availing CENVAT Credit in respect of input services; refund of the same was claimed under Rule 5 of the CCR, though the exports were made between April 2008 and June 2009, but however, the foreign exchange receipts for the above exports were realized only during July and August 2009 in terms of Softex Forms filed before the STPI.
Decision
The division bench of P. DINESHA, MEMBER (JUDICIAL) and M. AJIT KUMAR, MEMBER (TECHNICAL) found that the Bench has considered in threadbare almost similar issue in the light of the Order of the Larger Bench in the case of M/s. Span Infotech (India) Pvt. Ltd. and also referred to orders of various CESTAT Benches across the country, and held that while scrutiny of the refund claims filed by the appellants, the lower adjudicating authority rejected a portion of the refund claims for the reason that they are not eligible for availment of Cenvat credit under Cenvat Credit Rules, 2004, on account of missing invoices, excess credit wrongly taken, Not being related to output service, non- mentioning of service provider’s registration number on the input/input service invoices etc.
It was found in the above case that in the grounds of appeal the appellants have admitted that certain excess credit was wrongly taken by them amounting to Rs.7,819/- and a few invoices involving a credit of Rs. 1,91,935/- were not submitted which were categorized as missing. The appellant is required to reverse this input tax credit as admitted by them.
In view of the above, the Tribunal was of the view that the rejection of refund by the lower authorities is not in order, for which reason it set aside the impugned order.
Case title: M/s. Fisher Chennai Engineering Centre v/s Commissioner of Service Tax
Citation: Service Tax Appeal No. 40956 of 2014