TaxTMI 
TaxTMI 
TaxTMI 
2023 (11) TMI 526
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....hem under an agreement with DGH of Government of India and further issue is whether Appellant is liable to pay service tax on the amount of income tax deposited under the TDS Scheme on payment made to Dynamic Global Advisors Ltd., which is located outside India, for the services received. 2. The brief facts of the case are that the Appellant is engaged in the business of 'mining of mineral oil or gas' and had submitted bid for oil and gas exploration blocks, offered under New Licensing Exploration Policy VII (NELP VII), by the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas, Government of India. 3. It was provided in the bid document that the Appellant was required to purchase data related to geological and seismic quality of the blocks from the 'D....
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....2007 to March 2009 to the Appellant, demanding service tax under 'survey and exploration of mineral category' for the payment made by them to GXT and GGS for acquiring the licensing rights of the data. The said Show Cause Notice also demanded service tax from the Appellant on the tax deducted at source, under the Income Tax Act, 1961, on the payments made to DGAL. 7. We have heard Learned Counsel Shri Prasad Paranjape on behalf of the Appellant and Shri AVLN Chary, Authorised Representative for the Revenue, and carefully considered the submissions and the facts on record. 8. It is the case of the Appellant, that service tax under the service category of 'survey and exploration of minerals' under Section 65(105)(zzv) read with Section 65(1....
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.... interpretation of data, are liable to service tax. In the present case, GXT and GGS are not appointed by the Appellant to carry out survey, collection, processing, interpretation of data for them, but the data is already available in the ownership of GXT and GGS, which is only made available to the Appellant on a license to use basis. It is further submitted by the Appellant that in view of Rule 3(ii) of Taxation of Services (provided from outside India and received in India) Rules, 2006, since the activities of GXT and GGS - entities located outside India are performed outside India, the same will not be liable to service tax in India. The actual collection of data which will be carried out from within India is done by GXT and GGS for sel....
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....on, cannot, be sustained and penalties cannot be levied. 13. Opposing the appeal, Authorised Representative for the Revenue submitted that since the invoice raised by GXT indicated geophysical services, service tax is correctly charged. He also submitted that since the data is only licensed, the ownership is not transferred to the Appellant and therefore it is not a case of sale of data to the Appellant and thus, it is a case of rendering of service to the Appellant. He also submitted that the data is obtained from India by GXT & GGS, and hence it cannot be said that services are provided by GXT and GGS from outside India. With regard to limitation, he relied upon the finding of the Adjudicating Authority. 14. We have carefully considered....
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....rrying out any specific survey or exploration activity for them. This can be equated with the Appellant seeking license to use any copy right OR IPR protected knowledge, available in the form of a book or a web portal. The consideration paid for licensing of such data for use can at best be classified under the service category of Intellectual Property Right of 'online information access or database retrieval' (if it was to be made available online). However, the show cause notice proposed to levy service tax under the category 'survey and exploration of mineral'. As per the CBEC Circular itself, activities such as seismic survey, collection, processing, interpretation of data, in relation to survey and exploration, would fall within the am....