Registration jurisdiction for stock brokers determined by place of membership grant and VSAT infrastructure location.
Trading members of the National Stock Exchange must register their premises with the Central Excise Commissionerate having jurisdiction over the place where trading membership is granted and where infrastructural facilities for installing and operating VSATs are provided, irrespective of the location of their other offices.

Service tax on brokerage: charging at both brokers is justified as tax mirrors commission charged.
Where two brokers provide services in a single securities transaction, service tax attaches to each broker separately because the tax is a percentage of the aggregate commission or brokerage charged by each broker; consequently charging service tax at both ends reflects distinct brokerage charges and is not double taxation.

Adjudication powers tied to service tax amount - limits set for officers; consolidation and return-failure rules follow.
Adjudication powers are tied to the amount of service tax involved: Commissioner handles failures to collect or remit without limit; Additional Commissioner/Deputy Commissioner adjudicate penalties for deliberate evasion up to a prescribed ceiling; Assistant Commissioner adjudicate penalties for failure to comply with notices up to a prescribed ceiling. Jurisdiction is determined by the service tax amount, consolidation of related cases is permitted under the officer competent for the highest-valued case, and Assistant Commissioners may adjudicate return-failure cases without regard to penalty amount. Executive instructions are to be issued to field formations.

Service tax on broker services: tax applies to each broker's commission when separate brokerage services are provided.
Taxable service for sale and purchase of securities is the service a stockbroker provides to an investor and is valued by the aggregate commission charged by that broker. When an investor engages a local broker who routes the order through another-exchange broker, two distinct taxable services exist because commission is charged by each broker; accordingly Service Tax applies on each broker's commission and does not constitute double taxation.

Service tax cell creation permitted outside headquarters where administrative convenience requires local handling of telephone service tax matters.
Creation of a Cell/Division in Headquarters was prescribed to centralize service tax administration and provide senior-officer guidance. Where the Secondary Switching Area or District Telecom Manager is located away from the Commissionerate headquarters and the Commissioner deems it administratively convenient, a local cell may be established in the Deputy Commissioner's or Assistant Commissioner's office to deal with service tax on telephones; field formations are to be informed.

Show cause notices prescribed in a uniform proforma to standardize demand, interest and penalty procedure for service tax noncompliance.
Mandates two standard templates for service tax notices: a Section 70(2) notice compelling registered persons who have failed to submit prescribed returns to file verified returns within thirty days, and a Sections 75/76 demand/penalty notice specifying alleged failures to collect or pay service tax, the resulting tax shortfall, interest and proposed penalty, requiring the recipient to show cause, produce supporting evidence, indicate desire for personal hearing, and warning that failure to respond permits ex parte adjudication.

Service tax on cellular telephone services affirmed; pager services excluded as non telephone one way paging devices.
Pager services are not taxable under the Service Tax Act, 1994 because, while pagers fall within the Indian Telegraph Act's wide definition of "telegraph," they are non speech, one way devices that do not amount to a "telephone connection." Conversely, cellular telephone services are taxable because cellular operators are licenced telegraph authorities and provide services to subscribers in relation to a telephone connection, thereby falling within the Act's definition of a taxable service.