TaxTMI 
TaxTMI 
2019 (9) TMI 1145
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....ared and argued on behalf of the assessee and Shri. S. Govindarajan, Ld. AR, appeared and argued on behalf of the Revenue. 3.1 The contentions of the Ld. Advocate for the appellant are summarized as under :- (i) The appellant provided Manpower Recruitment or Supply Agency Services exclusively for the plant and machinery of M/s. ACC Ltd., Madukkarai; (ii) The Revenue conducted investigation and thereafter, issued Show Cause Notice dated 22.02.2011 demanding Rs. 11,36,600/-; (iii) That the appellant is a proprietorship concern and was under a bona fide belief that there was no need to file Service Tax returns; (iv) An amount of Rs. 9,00,846/- was paid before issuance of Show Cause Notice, which has been ....
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....oint to be decided in the facts and circumstances of the present case is whether the authorities were justified in levying penalty under Section 78 of the Finance Act, 1994. 7.1 Facts are not in dispute. Hence, the matter is required to be decided mainly on the orders/decisions relied on by both the parties. It is also a matter of record that under similar circumstances, this Bench has extended the benefit of Section 80 ibid. by deleting the penalty under Section 78 in the appellant's own case vide Final Order No. 40593/2019 (supra). 7.2 In the cases relied on by the Revenue, which are referred to at paragraph 4 of this order, we find that the default was absolute i.e., the assessees therein had not at all deposited the Service Tax co....
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.... Notice that the statement of proprietor was recorded on 11.12.2009 by which, the Revenue comes to know of the Service Tax collection, non-filing of tax returns and the subsequent remittance of Rs. 9,00,846/- through his statement. So, everything was known clearly as early as 2009 itself. "Provided that in respect of the cases where the details relating to such transactions are recorded in the specified records for the period beginning with the 8th April, 2011 upto the date on which the Finance Bill, 2015 receives the assent of the President (both days inclusive), the penalty shall be fifty per cent. of the service tax so determined : Provided further that where service tax and interest is paid within a period of thirty da....
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.... "19. From the aforesaid discussion it is clear that penalty under Section 11AC, as the word suggests, is punishment for an act of deliberate deception by the assessee with the intent to evade duty by adopting any of the means mentioned in the section. 20. At this stage, we need to examine the recent decision of this Court in Dharamendra Textile (supra). In almost every case relating to penalty, the decision is referred to on behalf of the Revenue as if it laid down that in every case of non-payment or short payment of duty the penalty clause would automatically get attracted and the authority had no discretion in the matter. One of us (Aftab Alam, J.) was a party to the decision in Dharamendra Textile and we see no reason to u....