2018 (6) TMI 593

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....sed by the Assistant Commissioner of Central Excise & Service Tax, Division-I, Visakhapatnam. The case, in a nut shell is the respondents herein received commissions from container liners for providing services to them, which according to the Revenue, falls under the head "Business Auxiliary Services" w.e.f. 09.07.2004. The appellants herein were neither registered to provide services under this head nor paid service tax on such commissions. Show cause notices were issued demanding difference service tax along with interest under section 75 and penalty was also proposed to be imposed under sections 76 & 77 of Finance Act, 1994. The adjudicating authority vide the aforesaid Orders-in-Original has confirmed the demands and imposed penalties a....

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....the client, in whatever form or by whatever name called, whether or not conducted online, including lottery, lotto, bingo;] (iii) any customer care service provided on behalf of the client; or (iv) procurement of goods or services, which are inputs for the client; or [Explanation - For the removal of doubts, it is hereby declared that for the purposes of this sub-clause, "inputs" means all goods or services intended for use by the client;] (v) production or processing of goods for, or on behalf of the client; or (vi) provision of service on behalf of the client; or (vii) a service incidental or auxiliary to any activity specified in sub-clauses (i) to (vi), such as billing, issue or coll....

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....e" 3. The Department's appeal against this Order-in-appeal is on the following grounds: (a) As per the records of the instant case, the assessee have not dealt with any shipping lines and have received only brokerage/commission from Container lines as also admitted by their Managing Partner. The containers are quite different from shipping lines and the services rendered to container lines on commission basis are not covered in the definition of "Steamer Agent" as held by Ld. Commissioner (Appeals). Such services should be classified under the definition of "business auxiliary service". (b) Going by the definition and scope of "Steamer Agent" it is not appropriate to say that the assessee in the instant case were regist....

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....s from three sources (a) As Custom House Agents from importers and exporters, (b) from shipping lines for booking cargo in the ships and (c) from Container Lines for booking containers on their behalf. 6. Heard both sides and perused the records. As far as the arguments of the three streams of revenue said to be obtained from the Respondents are concerned, the present Order-in-Appeal deals only with the commissions which they received from container lines for rendering the services to them and not for other two streams of revenue referred to above. Therefore, we confine ourselves to the services rendered by the respondents to the container lines and the commissions received by them for such services. In a nutshell, in the field of intern....