2025 (5) TMI 1912

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....ere not considered on its merits and was rejected on the ground that neither Section 84 nor Section 85 of the Act empowered the filing of such cross objections. 2. The facts briefly stated are that the appellant is registered under categories of works Contract Service and goods transport agency service with the department and the main activity of the appellant is construction of residential complex. The appellant was duly discharging its tax liability and also filling the returns. The appellant was also collecting maintenance charges at Rs.1 per sq. feet from their customers who had engaged them for construction of the individual flats. The above amount that was collected along with construction charges were included by the appellant in th....

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....er Section 78. There after the Commissioner (Appeals) vide his communication dated 21.09.2015 asked the appellant to file the appellant's cross objection, if any to the Revenue's appeal. As directed by the First Appellate Authority the appellant filed their cross objections in which they raised the grounds questioning the correctness of demand for tax confirmed by the Original Authority on merits. They also raised grounds as to the non-sustainability of the extended period of time invoked for confirmation of the demand. However inadvertently in bottom of para 6 of the cross objections the appellant stated their eligibility to certain Cenvat credit, which was extraneous to the order, but however had no impact whatsoever on the merits of the ....

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....d that the management charges collected by them were prior to the handing over of the flat and was paid as part of the construction charges by the customers to the appellant and therefore squarely needed to be treated as part of the bundled services in terms of Section 65A of the Act. H would submit further that there was no separate service receiver identified for the receipt of the said taxable services which otherwise was carried out as a self-service by them and the Appellate Authority ought to have held that the demand for the tax under the management repair and maintenance services cannot be sustained in light of the decisions he had relied on in the appeal before the Ld. Commissioner Appeals. He submits that they had a good case whic....

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....oner (Appeals). The said order is impugned by the appellants. The contention of the learned advocate is that it was on the direction of Commissioner (Appeals) that they filed the cross-objection. Secondly, the appellate authority has not disclosed the reason for rejection of such cross-objections before passing the impugned order so as to enable the appellant to contest the same. In any case, he draws our attention to the Karnataka High Court judgment in the case of Southern Auto Products v. CCE, Bangalore reported as 2009 (244) E.L.T. 348 (Kar.) laying down that cross-objections filed before the Commissioner (Appeals), at the direction of the Commissioner (Appeals) are maintainable. As such, he submits that the impugned order holding to th....