Marketing and promotional services were treated as export of service under the Export of Service Rules, 2005, because they fell within the applicable service category and Board circular framework. The Revenue's challenge repeated earlier contentions and did not identify grounds to disturb the Tribunal's classification. The precedent invoked by the Revenue was not comparable and did not support contrary treatment of the services.

Service-tax penalties for payment under an incorrect taxable-service classification were unwarranted where the full tax liability and accrued interest had been paid before issuance of the show cause notice. Recorded payments under other service heads, subsequent payment of the balance, and confirmation by the jurisdictional officer established discharge of the entire liability. As tax was being paid, although under a different classification, the extended limitation period was unavailable and issuing the notice was unnecessary. The penalties were set aside in favour of the assessee.

Entry 12(a) of Notification No. 25/2012-ST confines the exemption to specified construction, erection, commissioning, installation and related services supplied for civil structures or other original works predominantly intended for non-commercial use. Transportation, fixing and levelling of boulders for a railway project do not constitute construction of a civil structure or execution of original works for this purpose. A subcontractor remains independently liable for service tax on taxable transportation services, even where those services are used by a principal contractor in a larger government railway project. Subcontract status does not extend the project-level exemption to otherwise taxable transportation work.

Limitation for an appeal before the Commissioner (Appeals) commences when the aggrieved assessee receives the adjudicating order. Postal tracking and acknowledgement records distinguished delivery to an intermediary sub-post office from actual delivery at the assessee's branch-office address. Receipt at the intermediary post office could not be treated as receipt by the assessee. On the recorded actual delivery date, the appeal was within the prescribed limitation period, making dismissal as time-barred unsustainable and requiring fresh consideration on merits.

Section 73(1) of the Finance Act, 1994 permits the extended limitation period for service-tax recovery only when fraud, collusion, wilful misstatement, or suppression of facts with intent to evade tax is established. Third-party information received from the Income Tax Department, without evidence of those ingredients, does not justify invoking the extended period. Consequently, a notice issued after the normal limitation period cannot sustain the service-tax demand, which is barred by limitation.

Reverse-charge liability for Banking and Other Financial Services requires proof of a service provider-recipient relationship. Foreign or intermediary bank deductions from export remittances do not, by themselves, establish that the exporter engaged, received, or paid for banking services; such deductions therefore cannot sustain reverse-charge tax liability. Classification as Scientific or Technical Consultancy Services depends on the activity's essential character, not the provider's qualifications. Compiling existing regulatory material and assisting with overseas pharmaceutical approvals, without independent research, technical study, experimentation, or scientific advice, does not fall within that category. Where no substantive tax demand survives, related interest and penalties lack basis.

Confirmation of a provisional attachment for alleged proceeds of crime requires a subsisting Scheduled Offence and must rest on the material recorded in the provisional attachment order, reasons to believe, and original confirmation complaint. A subsequently registered FIR, even if added to the ECIR, may provide a fresh basis for action but cannot retrospectively validate an existing attachment. Clubbing FIRs for a common investigation does not ordinarily extend the effect of an earlier cognizance-related order to a later FIR. Where the underlying FIRs are quashed or closed, no predicate offence survives and the attachment lacks statutory foundation.

Property attached and confirmed as proceeds of crime under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act, 2002 cannot be released merely because an equivalent bank guarantee is offered. The statutory framework preserves identifiable assets traceable to criminal activity for possible confiscation or restitution and contains no mechanism to substitute attached immovable property with security. Releasing the property could permit its sale, development, depletion, or further profit generation, undermining the objective of preventing enjoyment of proceeds of crime. The attachment therefore remains in force.

Service of an insolvency petition through repeated postal attempts and email, coupled with reasonable opportunities to respond, satisfies natural justice where the registered office remains closed and email service is not shown to have failed. A demand corporate guarantee may allow the principal borrower's timely written acknowledgments to bind the guarantor and extend limitation where the contract so provides; an insolvency application filed within the renewed period is timely. Undisputed loan disbursement, guarantee execution, NPA classification and acknowledgments establish financial debt and default absent discharge, revocation, unenforceability or a challenge to the claimed amount, supporting initiation of the corporate insolvency resolution process.

A subsisting restoration direction must be implemented despite an intended review petition, as a proposed review does not justify withholding compliance. The Registrar of Companies must promptly restore the company's name and update its status as active on the Ministry of Corporate Affairs website. The restoration remains subject to any order subsequently made in the review application.

Voluntary Customs statements by an importer, proprietor and agents may substantiate under-invoicing and misdeclaration without cross-examination where they cannot be compelled to give self-incriminating evidence. Electronic data recovered from an importer's laptop and forensically examined in its presence constitutes original electronic records, so certification applicable to secondary electronic copies is not required. Admissions, supplier invoices and recovered electronic material can justify rejection of the declared transaction value. Assessable value may then be re-determined by applying the Customs valuation rules sequentially, with consequential duty, confiscation, appropriation and penalty consequences sustained.

Customs broker licence revocation and security forfeiture require established substantive misconduct affecting customs revenue or integrity; procedural licensing failures may instead warrant a monetary penalty. Address-change non-intimation, failure to obtain operational permission, and signature-related irregularities were treated as regulatory lapses, while subletting and concealment allegations required concrete proof. Electronic filing and use of intermediaries did not by themselves establish subletting. Due-diligence and client-advice obligations during customs clearance do not extend to exporters' subsequent excess RoSL availment. Accordingly, unproved allegations and procedural breaches did not support licence revocation, and the broker was not responsible for exporters' downstream conduct.

Delay in pronouncement of a reserved indirect-tax writ petition prompted its release for fresh hearing before the regular Bench handling such petitions. Applying the timely-pronouncement principle concerning reserved judgments, the Bench considered that it could not comply with the stipulated timelines and therefore directed reassignment rather than deliver the reserved judgment. Interim status quo was continued for four weeks pending placement before the regular Bench.

TDS credit reflected in Form 26AS cannot be denied merely because it was omitted from the original return and later claimed through rectification of an intimation under Section 143(1). Where the corresponding income has been offered to tax for the relevant assessment year, the Assessing Officer must verify both the TDS claim and inclusion of that income, and allow the credit if verified. Denial of a verified tax credit would cause unjust enrichment and conflict with the principle that tax may be collected only under authority of law.

Corporate-guarantee pricing is benchmarked at 0.5%, while interest on a commercially risky, subordinated loan linked to Siam Commercial Bank is recomputed at 9%. A further ad hoc disallowance of foreign travel expenditure is unwarranted where 20% has already been disallowed and subjected to fringe benefit tax. For captive-power transfers, the electricity market value for the Section 80IA deduction is the State Electricity Board tariff charged to industrial consumers, rather than a cost-plus rate. Carbon-credit sale proceeds are capital receipts; the prospective tax provision applicable from assessment year 2018-19 does not govern earlier years.

Contemporaneous evidence on intra-group support-service payments, including service rendition, benefits, costs and arm's-length character, may be admitted where limited response time and non-production provide sufficient cause. Its verification requires fresh transfer-pricing determination with opportunity to both sides. Reserve for Unexpired Risks cannot be added to book profit under clause (b) of Explanation 1 to section 115JB where it was not debited to the statement of profit and loss. The book-profit computation must therefore exclude such a reserve, consistently with the settled position.

Licence-fee valuation for a limited right to use patents was resolved through a lump-sum estimate because independent expert reports applying the cost approach produced materially different results, while the departmental valuation relied on objections lacking comparable domain expertise. The appellate estimation power was used only in these exceptional factual circumstances and was expressly treated as non-precedential. The licence fee attributable to the limited-use patent right was estimated at USD 900,000, requiring consequential computation of taxable royalty income.

Unverified purchases cannot be disallowed in full where corresponding sales are accepted and the procurement of goods from the market is established, albeit without proper supplier billing. The taxable addition should be confined to the profit element embedded in such purchases rather than the entire purchase value. Considering the nature of the business and surrounding circumstances, estimation at 12.5% was treated as excessive and reduced to 6.5% of the unverified purchases, with the resulting addition sustained accordingly.

Section 270A distinguishes under-reporting from misreporting and requires a penalty notice to identify the precise misreporting charge, including the relevant statutory limb, to enable an effective response. An undifferentiated notice and initiation lacking that specification violate natural justice and cannot support a misreporting penalty. Disclosure and taxation of additional professional income after search, without further material, do not by themselves establish misreporting. Section 271AAD targets false entries or omissions in books used to evade tax, particularly fraudulent documentation; unaccounted cash offered as professional income does not fall within that mischief. Penalties also require a valid jurisdictional assessment foundation.

Retrospective application of section 292BC prevents invalidation of search assessments merely because approval under section 153D is alleged to lack sufficient reasons or contain defects in form or authentication. The common approval consequently does not invalidate the assessments. For alleged accommodation-entry loan transactions, commission income requires a supportable estimation based on relevant market comparables; differing rates and an unexplained uniform rate cannot be accepted in full. On the stated peculiar facts, taxable commission is confined to a uniform 0.15% rate, without precedential effect.