TaxTMI 
TaxTMI 
2019 (10) TMI 670
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....reement would be classified as 'Support Services' under the Tariff Heading 9985 of Notification 11/2017 - Central Tax (Rate) dated 28.06.2017? b) Whether the services in question would be treated as Intermediary services or not? 3. The applicant furnishes some facts relevant to the stated activity: a. The applicant states that he is in the business of providing back-end support services to its various clients. b. As a part of its business, the applicant states that he has entered into a Trade Compliance Services ("the agreement") with Juniper Networks Inc., an entity located in the USA (hereinafter referred to as 'Juniper Inc.) which lays down terms of various services to be provided by the applicant. The Statement of Work ('SOW) attached to the Agreement details the various services to be provided by the applicant. As per the SOW, the applicant mainly provides the services of Trade Compliance Operations Management (involving assistance and support for export compliance, import compliance, manual documentation preparation, etc.) and miscellaneous administrative support (involving responding to request for historic shipping documents, filing end user certificates, updating th....
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.... 9985 Support Services 444 Group 99859 Other Support Services 448 998594 Combined Office Administrative Services 998595 Specialised office support services such as duplicating services, mailing services, document preparation and the like 453 998599 Other support services not specified elsewhere In addition to above, the applicant also refers to Explanatory notes as released by Central Board of Indirect Taxes and Customs (CBIC) which indicates the scope and coverage of the Heading, Groups and Service Codes of the Scheme of Classification of Services. The relevant extracts of the same is reproduced hereunder: 998594 - Combined Office Administrative Services This service includes provision of a combination of day to day office administrative services, such as reception, financial planning, billing and record keeping, personnel and mail services etc. for others on contract basis. 998595 - Specialised Office Support Services such as duplication services, mailing services and document preparation services. This service code includes services consisting of sending material by stuffing, sealing, metering and mailing docum....
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....es' on a standalone basis. i. Further, the applicant highlights that the said services provided under the agreement are not in the nature of an 'intermediary'. The term 'intermediary' is defined under Section 2(13) of IGST Act. The definition of intermediary is reproduced hereunder. Section 2(13) of IGST Act - 'Intermediary' means a broker, an agent or any other person, by whatever name called, who arranges or facilitates the supply of goods or services or both, or securities, between two or more persons, but does not include a person who supplies such goods or services or both securities on his own account'. j. In this regard, the applicant highlights the following facts as per the terms of the agreement: i. Services provided by the applicant to Juniper Inc (service recipient) is on a principal-to-principal basis; ii. The services in question are supplied by the applicant to Juniper Inc. on its own account; iii. The applicant provides the services directly to the service recipient i.e. Juniper Inc and not to any other person on behalf of the service recipient, say, the customers of Juniper Inc. iv. Juniper Inc. would be dealing with customers directly and the appli....
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....rincipal to principal basis and not as agent of said airline/ shipping lin. Therefore, applicant would be covered by the exclusion clause, i.e. provides the main service - inbound and outbound shipment on his own account in terms of Rule 2(f) of POP rules and thus not covered under Rule 9(c) ibid as "intermediary service" GoDaddy India Web Services Pvt Ltd [2016 (46) STR 806 (AAR)) = 2016 (3) TMI 355 - AUTHORITY FOR ADVANCE RULINGS the applicant is providing business support service such as marketing and other allied services like oversight of quality of third party customer care centre operated in India and payment processing services, on behalf of GoDaddy US. Therefore, these services provided by the applicant to GoDaddy US cannot be categorized as intermediary services. Universal Services India Pvt Ltd [91 VST 483 (AAR)] = 2016 (5) TMI 750 - AUTHORITY FOR ADVANCE RULINGS - In the given case, the applicant is engaged in provision of payment processing services to WWD US wherein it was held that services under the consideration is being provided on its own account as a main service and qualifies as Business Support Service and not an "intermediary". In the present case....
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....ain an independent contractor and not an employee of Juniper Networks. Except as specifically provided in this agreement, nothing in this agreement shall either be render, or be interpreted or construed to mean that the parties are partners, joint venturers, trustee/ beneficiary, employer/employee or principal/ agent of the other. Except as specifically provided in this agreement, neither party shall have any authority whatsoever to obligate or commit the other party, contractually or otherwise, and neither party shall so anything whatsoever to represent to any person that they have any authority to so obligate to commit the other party. (c) The applicant acknowledges that they have not authority to enter into and the applicant agrees not to enter into any contract incur any liability or otherwise act on behalf of Juniper Networks. Nothing in this agreement shall be construed to imply that vendor is an agent, employee, or other representative of Juniper Networks nor shall Vendor make any representations to the contrary. (d) In the course of performing the services, the applicant has agreed to comply with all applicable export, import and technology control laws and regulations.....
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....ervene into such transactions and take necessary actions based on guidelines provided by Juniper as per agreed SLA. iv. Shipping documents: Juniper revenue shipments are booked in Oracle by Juniper Order Management team and this information flows to TradeSphere application automatically. As a process, the applicant receives from Juniper contracted manufacturers and/or freight forwarders for shipping documents. The applicant is responsible for the accuracy of the compliance information on the shipping documents and to fulfill the document request of the manufacturer/ freight forwarder as per agreed SLA. v. Web Registration: As per the business decision by Juniper, all individuals / companies who register themselves on Juniper website to access certain information, will have to be screened against the business rules laid down by Juniper on TradeSphere application. At times, when the application is unable to make a decision, the applicant manually intervenes and takes necessary actions based on guidelines provided by Juniper and as per agreed SLA. vi. License key: As per the business logic on TradeSphere application, any transaction which should not be PASSED automatically by th....
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....en Juniper offices with non-Juniper products). Once trained, the applicant will be responsible to prepare the documents based on the destination country and relevant compliance parameters to be used for such transactions as instructed by Juniper. iv. Hong Kong Declaration documents: Juniper has assigned the responsibility to the applicant to prepare the documentation for declaration purposes at Hong Kong Customs. The applicant is responsible to prepare two sets of documents (import into Hong Kong and export out of Hong Kong) for each shipment which physically transit through Hong Kong. v. Accton Shipping documents: Juniper has assigned the responsibility to the applicant to prepare the documentation for certain shipments moving out of one of its contract manufacturers (Accton). The applicant is responsible to prepare the documents out of Accton moving to various Juniper offices and/or other contract manufacturer locations worldwide. vi. CS Hub documents: Juniper APAC Customer Support team has trained the applicant to prepare the documentation for all CS Shipments moving from Singapore UPS hub to Customers and/or other UPS locations in APAC region. In addition to this, the app....
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....get through and the payment will be processed. The ones which do not have a pre-coded GL Code will be on hold. Juniper has trained Fulcrum on how to handle such exceptions and the applicant will be responsible to clear the outstanding payments based on the knowledge imparted by Juniper. (h) Regarding the administrative tasks the process related ad-hoc requests are placed by the management team at Juniper to the applicant. Some examples of such requests are listed in the agreement: a. Web Registration mass update of back-end data which triggers a spike in volume on the process b. Request for historic shipping documents c. Filing End User Certificates and verifying the accuracy and eligibility of the same at the time of releasing an order d. Updating the compliance details of Juniper intangible products and coordinating with Juniper IT helpdesk to upload the details on TradeSphere application e. Updating licenses obtained by Juniper in TradeSphere application. 4.2 The details of the above works that has been entrusted to the applicant by Juniper shows that the Juniper Inc has outsourced its works to the applicant and the applicant is providing his services either updatin....
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....o in between. The applicant is thus not involved as an intermediary in terms of the contents of the statement of work provided by the applicant. 4.5 The issue under question is whether the services provided by the applicant to Juniper Inc would be classifiable as "Support Services" under the Tariff Heading 9985 of Notification No. 11/2017 - Central Tax (Rate) dated 28.06.2017. The nature of the service supplied by the applicant is verified and found that the applicant is providing the services which is in the nature of back office work. The claim of the applicant that the services provided by him is covered under the Heading 9985 is verified and found the following Heading 9985 is related to Chapter, Section, Heading or Group Service Code (Tariff) Service Description Heading 9985 Support Services Group 99851 Employment services including personnel search/referral service and labour supply service Group 99852 Investigation and security services Group 99853 Cleaning services Group 99854 Packaging services Group 99855 Travel arrangement, tour operator and related services Group 99859 Other support services &nb....