2018 (4) TMI 1183

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....(herein after referred to as Cipla) for sale of medicaments manufactured by the latter and had entered into Agreements for the purpose. The assessee was initially registered as Clearing and Forwarding Agent but later surrendered the registration on 29.1.2001. It appears that the jurisdictional Assistant Commissioner did not accept the surrender and also passed an order dated 28.12.2001, directing the assessee to continue the registration and pay service tax in the said category. The assessee again obtained new registration in the same category on 31.12.2001. There was a dispute concerning the taxability of the activities of the assessee under Clearing and Forwarding Service which culminated in Tribunal's Final Order dated 27.4.2004. Departm....

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....it in respect of the duty demand proposed in the notice restricting it to Rs. 95,95,153/- with interest and imposed penalties under sections 75A, 76, 77 and 78 of the Act on the assessee. The adjudicating authority also imposed penalty of Rs. 1 lakh each on Shri Yogesh Bhandari (appellant in Appeal No.ST/14/2016); Cipla (appellant in Appeal No.ST/15/2016) and Shri Gopalakrishnan (appellant in Appeal No.ST/16/2016). Aggrieved the assessee and the other noticees have filed these appeals. 2. Today, when the matter came up for hearing on behalf of the appellants, ld. Advocates Ms. Sweta Giridhar and Ms. Kritika Jaganathan submitted oral and written submissions which are summarized as under:- 2.1 The show cause notice has recorded in parag....

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....Vs. CCE - 1997 (94) ELT 289 (SC) 2.5 Aside from rejecting the classification as commission agent under BAS, the show cause notice or the impugned order has not made any endeavor whatsoever to specify which clause of BAS would be applicable to its activities. To this date, the appellant is perplexed as to which segment of BAS its activities allegedly fall under. 2.6 For this reason alone, the impugned order confirming demand of service tax on BAS for the period from 1.7.2003 to 8.7.2004 is unjust and merits to be dropped. 2.7 The entire issue is hit by limitation. The activities of the appellants were well known to the department right from earlier period. The department had in fact initiated proceedings against the assessee demandi....

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....ivities of the assessee would be only under C&F service. In a situation where the department has initiated proceedings demanding service tax liability against a person for a particular period, under a particular service, in the normal course, it would be expected that the department would issue periodical show cause notices till the matter is finally settled. There is no evidence that this has been done. At the same time, we find that after the Tribunal decided the earlier matter in favour of the appellant had withdrawn the registration under that service and on 30.7.2004, they had taken a fresh registration as "commission agent" under Business Auxiliary Service. Assessee was discharging service tax liability from 9.7.2004 only on the plea ....