Freight and transit insurance may be excluded from assessable value even without separate invoice disclosure, if verifiable from records.

Freight and transit insurance could be excluded from assessable value even if not separately shown in the sale invoice, because the Act did not require prior invoice disclosure for such deductions. The Tribunal reasoned that actual freight may only be ascertainable later from freight bills, and denying exclusion on that ground would undermine the valuation scheme; correlation with invoices and gate passes was treated as verifiable. Refund relief was therefore available to that extent, subject to statutory limitation under the excise refund provision and verification of supporting records.

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Issues: Whether freight and transit insurance could be deducted from the assessable value and refund granted even though such amounts were not shown separately in the sale invoices, and subject to the refund claims not being barred by limitation under the excise refund provision.

Analysis: The Tribunal held that no provision in the Act required freight and transit insurance to be separately shown in the invoice before such amounts could be excluded from assessable value. Where actual freight was incurred, the amount might be known only later on receipt of freight bills, and denial of deduction merely for want of prior invoice disclosure would defeat Section 4(2) of the Central Excises and Salt Act, 1944. Correlation between freight bills, invoices and gate passes was considered feasible on verification. The portion of the claim hit by limitation was not pressed.

Conclusion: Deduction for freight and transit insurance was held allowable on verification, and the refund claims were allowed to that extent, subject to the time bar under Section 11B of the Central Excises and Salt Act, 1944.

Final Conclusion: The appeals succeeded, and consequential refund relief was granted subject to statutory limitation and verification of supporting records.

Ratio Decidendi: Freight and transit insurance need not be separately shown in the invoice in advance to be excluded from assessable value where the amounts are verifiable from later freight documents and the statutory conditions are otherwise satisfied.

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