Snacks Provided by Hotel while delivering Mandap Keeping Services is not ‘Meal’: CESTAT [Read Order]

While denying Service Tax exemption to the Woodlands Hotels Pvt Ltd, the Bangalore bench of the Custom, Excise and Service Tax Appellate Tribunal ( CESTAT ) held that the snacks provided by the hotels while performing the service of mandap keeping can’t be treated as substantial and satisfying meal’.

The appellant runs a chain of hotels. The department took a view that the appellant has wrongly availed the Notification of existing Service Tax to hotels during 20.12.2001 to 08.07.2004 and they failed to pay Service Tax for the period from 09.07.2004 to 31.01.2005. It was of the opinion that the tea and snacks is not a substantial meal as is understood by common people.

The question before the Tribunal was whether tea and snacks served by the appellants while performing the service of ‘Mandap keeper’ amount to satisfy meal.

Upholding the orders of the lower authorities, the bench held that “Going by the above definitions and the public perception, we are of the opinion that a snack cannot be equated to a high tea; for that logic, it comes rarely closer to a ‘substantial and satisfying meal’. Therefore, it is to be concluded that snack cannot fulfill the conditions of the food being substantial and satisfying. Therefore, we are of the opinion that the ratio of the judgments cited by the appellants is not applicable to the instant case. Whereas the issue discussed in the ‘Welcome Hotel’ was high tea which is normally a replacement for dinner; the issue in the impugned case is a ‘snack’ which is normally eaten between the meals. Snack cannot be a substantial and satisfying meal.”