Credit on Advocate services rendered for Closed Office premises in dispute

[Ravinder Guleria]

Dear Sir,

Shall we take service tax credit on Reverse charge paid by us on Advocate services who is rendering Arbitration case against vacate of Office premises 3-4 years back. At that time we had sperate office and factory premises and had seperate Service Tax registrations.  But due to some reasons we have vacated the office and surrendered the registration and shifted to factory itself. We have all the registration, incl. Service Tax, Excise &  other regn. My question is whether we can take credit on these services currently.

AI Summary

CENVAT credit eligibility hinges on demonstrated nexus to production or output services and timely claim.
Claiming input tax credit for advocate services paid under the reverse charge depends on eligibility under the CENVAT regime, demonstration of nexus between the legal services and taxable output activity (stronger for manufacturers), compliance with the CENVAT Credit Rules, and timeliness consistent with judicially recognised reasonableness constraints on delayed claims.