Click to Nomination Visit: tiolawards.in

2022-TIOL-116-CESTAT-MUM

Bhatia Shipping Pvt Ltd Vs CST

ST - The appellant is primarily engaged in business of freight forwarding, clearing and forwarding and other allied activities that involve booking of Containers/Air Cargo with various Shipping Lines/Airlines for their customers and recovering other miscellaneous charges from their customers - Appellant pays charges for space booking to different Shipping Lines/Airlines and later on sells such space to the exporters/importers at a slightly higher amount - The difference between the amount paid by appellant to Shipping Lines/Airlines and the amount recovered by appellant from the customers (exporter/importers) is called the "mark-up" - The Department was of the view that this "mark-up" was for services provided by appellant to customers and was therefore, liable to service tax under category of "support services of business or commerce BSS", covered under section 65(104) of FA, 1994 - Department has, however, placed reliance upon two decisions of Tribunal in Bhuvaneswari Agencies (P) Ltd. 2007-TIOL-1726-CESTAT-BANG and D. Pauls Consumer Benefit Ltd. 2017-TIOL-908-CESTAT-DEL and contended that the impugned orders do not suffer from any illegality - The Division Bench in earlier decision rendered in Satkar Logistics accepted the contention advanced on behalf of appellant that the appellant was only trading in space and was not providing any service - The decision in D. Pauls Consumer Benefit Ltd. was overruled by Larger Bench of Tribunal in Kafila Hospitality & Travels Pvt. Ltd. 2021-TIOL-159-CESTAT-DEL-LB - Thus, the impugned order cannot be sustained and is set aside: CESTAT

- Appeals allowed: MUMBAI CESTAT