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2020 (2) TMI 119

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....gislative competence to levy service tax under Entry 97 List I of the Constitution of India. 80.With this background, it is important now to examine the Finance Act as it obtained, firstly from 16th June, 2005 uptil 1st July, 2012. 81.The definition of "club or association" contained in Section 65(25a) makes it plain that any person or body of persons providing services for a subscription or any other amount to its members would be within the tax net. However, what is of importance is that anybody "established or constituted" by or under any law for the time being in force, is not included. Shri Dhruv Agarwal laid great emphasis on the judgments in DALCO Engineering Private Limited v. Satish Prabhakar Padhye, (2010) 4 SCC 378 (in particul....

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....estricting the word "constitute" to mean only "to create", when clearly it could also mean putting a thing in a legal shape. The Bombay High Court, therefore, in the case of Dwarkadas Khetan and Co. v. CIT [(1956) 29 ITR 903, 907], was right in holding that the section could not be restricted in its application only to a firm which had been created by an instrument of partnership, and that it could reasonably and in conformity with commercial practice, be held to apply to a firm which may have come into existence earlier by an oral agreement, but the terms and conditions of the partnership have subsequently been reduced to the form of a document. If we construe the word "constitute" in the larger sense, as indicated above, the difficulty i....

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.... for another for consideration. We have seen how in the judgment relating to sales tax, the fact is that in members' clubs there is no sale by one person to another for consideration, as one cannot sell something to oneself. This would apply on all fours when we are to construe the definition of "service" under Section 65B(44) as well. 86.However, Explanation 3 has now been incorporated, under sub-clause (a) of which unincorporated associations or body of persons and their members are statutorily to be treated as distinct persons. 87.The explanation to Section 65, which was inserted by the Finance Act of 2006, reads as follows: "Explanation: For the purposes of this section, taxable service includes any taxable service provided or to....

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....orporated or not. Explanation 3 to Section 65B(44), instead of using the expression "person" or the expression "an association of persons or bodies of individuals, whether incorporated or not", uses the expression "a body of persons" when juxtaposed with "an unincorporated association". 91.We have already seen how the expression "body of persons" occurring in the explanation to Section 65 and occurring in Section 65(25a) and (25aa) does not refer to an incorporated company or an incorporated cooperative society. As the same expression has been used in Explanation 3 post-2012 (as opposed to the wide definition of "person" contained in Section 65B(37)), it may be assumed that the legislature has continued with the pre-2012 scheme of not taxi....