The Customs, Excises, Service Taxes Appellate Tribunal (CESTAT) while quashing the order passed by the CIT(A) ruled that merely that the name of the appellant is not appearing on the Lorry Receipts, cannot be the reason to reject the refund.
The appellant, Adani Enterprises Limited is a merchant exporters inter-alia engaged in the business of export of goods. The appellant filed a refund claim in terms of Notification dated January 6, 2007, as amended from time to time of service tax for the services used in the export of goods. The refund claim was filed on account of services received for export of goods for the quarter Jan 2008 to March 2008. The appellant filed a letter, withdrew the refund claim and claimed a refund of the balance amount.
The Assistant Commissioner of service tax rejected the refund claim for the balance amount. The Commissioner (Appeals) remanded the matter to the adjudicating authority for deciding the case on merit, the impugned order confirmed the order-in-original. The Commissioner (Appeals) rejected the appeal on the ground that the Registration number of the service providers was not mentioned in the invoices issued by the service provider. Refund claim pertaining to the period October 2007 to December 2007 for which refund claim was filed after a period of 60 days, therefore hit by limitation. Refund claim filed for service tax paid on GTA Service for transportation of goods from ICD to Port was not supported with proper documents, co-related with the export of goods. Refund claim filed for storage and warehouse service rejected on the premise that there was no correlation of export with documents of service provided of storage and warehouse. Refund claim was filed for GTA for transportation of goods from the place of removal up to Port, lorry receipt did not mention the name of the appellant, therefore, it was held that refund claim was not filed with proper documents.
The tribunal consisting of Judicial Member Ramesh Nair and Technical Member Raju held that the Commissioner (Appeals) has wrongly rejected the refund claim and said that merely that the name of the appellant is not appearing on the Lorry Receipts, cannot be the reason to reject the refund.
The tribunal was of the view that since the goods were transported directly from their factory to the Port, though all the related documents were in the name of the appellant, the Lorry receipt does not bear the name of appellant is obviously due to inadvertent mistake on the part of the transporters.
The tribunal further pointed out that The transportation of goods gets clearly correlated with other documents which bear the name of the appellant. The appellant also obtained certificates from the transporters.
Therefore, the tribunal clarified that invoice numbers and Lorry Receipts referred to the transportation of Polyester Cotton Grey from Mafatlal Industries Limited to Port is under the instruction of the appellant and due to their inadvertent mistake, the name of the appellant along with Mafatlal Industries Limited was not mentioned in the Lorry Receipts. It was also certified by the transporters that against the said Lorry Receipts, the invoices were raised on the appellant and the same was paid by them.
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