Delayed-payment charges and assessable value: charges linked to price recovery were excluded from excise valuation.

Amounts clearly identifiable as consideration for delayed payment of the price were treated as outside the assessable value because they remained linked to the price recovery mechanism rather than constituting separate value additions. The Tribunal followed its earlier decision in the assessee's own case and accepted that the unusual flat-rate collection pattern did not change the character of the charge, especially where the lower authorities had found it to be attributable to delayed payment and nothing else. On that basis, the delayed-payment charges were not includible in assessable value under the Central Excise valuation rules.

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Issues: Whether the amount collected as interest on delayed payment for white cement formed part of the assessable value.

Analysis: The Tribunal followed its earlier order in the assessee's own case and held that extra charges collected at a flat rate, when identifiable as attributable to delayed payment of the price, do not cease to be price merely because the collection pattern is unusual. The decisive consideration was that the lower authorities had treated the amount as a collection on account of delayed payment and had not found it to be anything else. On that basis, such charges were not liable to be included in the assessable value.

Conclusion: The amount collected as interest on delayed payment was not includible in the assessable value, and the appeal succeeded.

Ratio Decidendi: Amounts clearly identifiable as consideration for delayed payment of price are not part of the assessable value under section 4 of the Central Excise Act, 1944.

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