Jurisprudentiol – Wednesday's cases

By Vijay Kumar

Legal Corner Icon — the image was hosted by the publisher and was not captured.Central Excise

Penalty under rule 26 of CER is imposable on a corporate body as in eyes of law it is a juristic person - as there is no quantification of duty, penalty imposable is Rs.10,000/- only: CESTAT

WITH regard to the penalty under Rule 26 again, we do agree with the contention of the DR that in Twenty First Century a penalty can be imposed on a juristic person as per law and the corporate body is also a juristic person in the eyes of law. Penalty under Rule 26 is imposable. We do agree with the contention that there is no quantification of duty, therefore the maximum penalty under Rule 26 is Rs. 10,000/-

Income Tax

Whether Revenue can initiate reassessment proceedings merely on basis of information obtained from Central Excise Department that assessee had suppressed sales of manufactured goods - YES, but all relied upon documents to be given to assessee: ITAT

THE Assessing Officer issued a notice under sections 148 of the Act on 27.10.2008. Before issuing the said notice, the Assessing Officer recorded the following reasons for initiating proceedings under sections 147 of the Act. The CIT(A) affirmed the order of the AO. Before ITAT, it was contended that the AO has violated the principle of natural justice in as much as he had not supplied the material, collected from Excise department, to the assessee for its rebuttal.

Service Tax

When issue involved is rate of service tax liable to be paid by assessee, matter is to be heard by a Division Bench in terms of section 35D(3) of CEA, 1944 as made applicable to service tax: CESTAT

THE assessee paid service tax on the activities undertaken by them for the period July, 2005 to December, 2006 under the category of "construction of complex services" voluntarily without any protest. Subsequently, when works contract service was brought under the tax net effective from 01/06/2007, the assessee submitted that since the service provided by them comes under the category of "works contract" and not under the category of "construction of commercial complexes", they are entitled for the refund of the service tax paid by them for the previous periods.

See our columns Tomorrow for the judgements