2018 (1) TMI 171

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....ervice Tax Appellate Tribunal, New Delhi dated 2.5.2013 whereby the appeal of the appellant/assessee has been dismissed. The appellant is running a travelling agency in the name of M/s. Jai Santoshi Maa Travellers as a sole proprietor. It provides vehicles to customer on rent/hiring and one of the major customers happens to be Gas Authority of India Limited (hereinafter referred to as 'GAIL). The appellant under an agreement titled as "Work Order for hiring of vehicles on monthly basis" provided various types of vehicles at different rates to the GAIL with driver and petrol. The said agreement inter-alia provides that apart from paying fixed charges up to a certain mileage in a month, the appellant would charge additional amount o....

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....argeable to service tax? There was no tax on 'services' and the "goods manufactured" alone were taxable despite the fact that 'services' constituted about 40% of the Gross Domestic Product. Thus, to cover the 'services' and to bring them within the tax net, service tax was first introduced in the budget of 1994 w.e.f. 1.7.1994. Initially, only few services were proposed to be taxed and later the net was widened. The services provided by any person under a rent-a-cab scheme operator was also included in the definition of taxable services but was exempted upto 31.3.2000. The exemption was later withdrawn and such service was covered within the charging Section 66 of the Finance Act. The relevant provisions of the....

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....e services are provided by them to any person in relation to the renting of the cabs, such service becomes a "taxable service" and, therefore, comes within the ambit of Section 66 (3) of the Finance Act." On the contrary a Division Bench of the High Court of Uttarakhand at Nanital in Commissioner, Customs and Central Excise Vs. Sachin Malhotra and connected matters vide judgment and order dated 6th August 2014 in view of Section 75 of the Motor Vehicles Act and the rent-a-cab scheme 1989 of the Government carved out a distinction between a "rent-a-cab" and "hiring of a cab" and held that both renting and hiring of a cab are significantly two different transactions and that in the case of renting the hirer has freedom to use the vehicle a....