TaxTMI 
TaxTMI 
2025 (5) TMI 1919
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....hine Works, M/s.Lakshmi Automatic Loom Works Ltd. M/s. Lakshmi Card Clothing Mfg. Co. Pvt. Ltd, M/s.Textool Company Ltd. & M/s.Rabatex Group of Industries. Upon scrutiny of the documents, it appeared that appellant had provided certain services on commissions to their principals which fall under the service category of 'Clearing and Forwarding Agency's Services (CFAS, for short). However, the service provider had not registered themselves with the Department and had not discharged their service tax liability. The scope of the work by the appellant is to identify the sales opportunities and promote the sales of the products manufactured by the said principals who in turn, supplied the goods to the customers. Appellant also attended to the fo....
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....d from 01.09.1999 to 30.06.2003 and imposed penalties under Sections 75A, 76, 77 & 78 of the Finance Act, 1994. Aggrieved by the impugned OIO dt. 09.12.2012 passed by the Adjudicating Authority, the present appeal has been filed before Tribunal. 4. We have heard Shri S. Murugappan, Ld. Advocate for the Appellant/Assessee and Shri Sanjay Kakkar, Ld. Deputy Commissioner for the Respondent/Revenue. 5. After hearing both sides and upon perusal of records, we find that the scope and issue of the present appeal is the liability of the appellant to Service Tax under Clearing and Forwarding Agents Services (C&FS in short). 6.1 In the Agreement titled 'Selling Agency Agreement' between the appellant and 'Lakshmi Automatic Loom Works Ltd" [L....
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....t. Ltd. Selling Agency: The PRINCIPALS hereby appoint and the AGENTS agree to act as one of the Selling AGENTS of the PRINCIPALS for the goods described under Clause 02 in the territory described under Clause 03 of this Agreement, subject to the terms and conditions of this Agreement. 7. In their reply dated 21.06.2013 prior to Show Cause Notice, the appellant has explained their role that they do not come under the purview of C&FS. The same reads as below: (a) One of the category of persons to whom Service Tax is applicable is a Clearing & Forwarding Agent (C&FA). We do not perform the specified operations of a C&FA namely clearing and forwarding of goods. We are only involved with identification of sales oppo....
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.... down is the fact that the appellant is providing the services of a selling agent alone. On the contrary, other than these agreements and other than picking up parts selectively from these very agreements, the Revenue has not come out with any evidence to dislodge the claim of the appellant. Nor do we find any denial as to the fact of the appellant was procuring orders on behalf of their principles and promoting sales of their products for which services they had received commission. Strangely, even the show cause notice at page 2 having recorded the above factual position that the appellant was acting as a selling agent, however, has deviated from the above in the Order-in-Original, to hold that the appellant was acting as a Cleaning & For....
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....ent' and he be deemed to have rendered both services would amount to replacing the conjunctive 'and' by a disjunctive which is not possible. The counsel for the revenue has not been able to bring on record any material to show the word 'and' should be construed as disjunctive. He has not shown any 'trade practice' which may lead to a necessary inference that service of one kind rendered by one is invariably considered to comprise both. No argument has been advanced before us by him to canvass that the legislature intention is discernible from the scheme of the statute or from any other relevant material. Therefore the word 'and' should be understood in a conjunctive sense (See Maharaja Sir Pateshwari Prasad Singh v. State of U.P. (1963) 50 ....