MUMBAI, APRIL 23, 2013: MR. Zaheerkhan B. Khan, Mumbai was providing services to various corporate for promotion of their products by agreeing to model himself for advertisements films, TV commercials, still photographing, footage, press advertisement, etc. For this purpose, he had entered into a tripartite agreement. As per the said agreement, his agents, namely, M/s. Percept D Mark (India) Pvt. Ltd., M/s. Globosport and M/s. Globo Media Solutions (I) Pvt. Ltd. would negotiate with the corporate on his behalf for the activity to be undertaken by him and they would receive consideration from the corporate for the services rendered and would discharge the service tax liability on the whole amount of the consideration received and after deducting the expenses including their commission, they would remit the balance amount to Zaheerkhan .

The Commissioner of Service Tax, Mumbai issued Zaheerkhan a Service Tax demand of Rs.17,86,300/- in respect of the services rendered on the ground that he was the service provider and the service tax paid on the consideration received by his agent cannot be treated as proper discharge of service tax.

A year down the line, the demand was confirmed with interest, equivalent penalty etc.

Zaheerkhan was going through a bad patch - the pitch did not have the bounce for him, the reverse swing had lost its reverse. He lost his appeal before the Commissioner (A) and is now before the CESTAT.

He submitted that as per the definition under Section 65(7) of the FA, 1994 “assessee means a person liable to pay service tax and includes his agent”; that as per the tripartite agreement, he has appointed three agencies as agents not only for the purpose of negotiating with the corporate for the services to be undertaken by him but also for the discharge of tax liability. Since the agent has discharged the service tax liability, which amounts to payment of service tax by the appellant, there cannot be any demand on the same transaction again. He also relied on the decision in the case of Ms. Katrina R.Turcotte vs. CST, Mumbai reported in 2012-TIOL-1780-CESTAT-MUM wherein the Bench had held that the service tax liability discharged through the agent is sufficient and service tax demand cannot be made on the principal for the same transaction again and accordingly allowed the appeal.

He says that a similar view should be taken in his case also and his appeal should be allowed.

The Revenue representative submitted that since Ms. Katrina R Turcotte has been given the benefit, he concedes.

The Bench observed -

“7. As rightly pointed out by the Ld. Consultant, the assessee includes his agent and therefore, if the tax liability has been discharged by the agent on the service rendered by his principal, that is sufficient for discharge of service tax liability by the principal. Therefore, following the decision in the case of Ms. Katrina R Turcotte (supra), we allow this appeal with consequential relief, if any. The stay application is also disposed of.”

Beamer -

"I want to continue for another 3-4 years," Zaheer told Mirror . "By no means am I done. I still have that hunger. I just need to sort things out and make the right calls. I know that I definitely have three-four years and I will make sure I come back and come back strong. I want to prepare fully, in terms of bowling, fielding and fitness. I want to cover all angles now and use this time really wisely in preparing."

By the way, the gentleman in question is ZAK, Zaheer Khan, the Indian fast bowler with 295 test wickets & 282 ODI wickets. Zaheer held the world record for the highest Test score by a number 11 when he scored 75 against Bangladesh in 2004.

(See 2013-TIOL-643-CESTAT-MUM)