Manufacture of Notifications - Some Brilliance, some Baking
THE brilliant boys of the North Block come up with an average of 1.5 Notification per day and sometimes their brilliance is visible, though often their callous contempt is flaunted. Maybe while the rest of the world was on New Year revelry, these poor bright chaps were cooking up notifications, which had to meet the deadline of the New Year.
No Quarterly Return for garments and yarn: Manufacturers of garments, yarn, fabrics are allowed to file quarterly returns within 20 days of the end of the quarter, as per the second proviso to Rule 12(1) of the Central Excise Rules. Now this proviso is deleted. These manufacturers will also now file monthly returns like others. And Notification No. 31/2011- CENT dated 30.12.2011, stipulates that "The assessees referred to in the second proviso to the sub-rule (1) of rule 12 shall file return in Form ER-3 for the quarter beginning from the 1st October, 2011 and ending with the 31st December, 2011". When the second proviso is deleted, how can those covered under it be required to file the return? The brilliant babu has deleted the proviso with effect from 31st January 2012 while Notification No. 31/2011 (requirement of return) is made on 30th December 2011! - Notification No. 31/2011-CE(N.T), Dated: December 30, 2011 and Notification No. , Dated: December 30, 2011
Customs Officers appointed as Central Excise Officers to deal with Service Tax Refunds: Netizens may recall that Government has put in place a scheme of granting Service Tax refunds for exports, through the Customs EDI. [Please see yesterday's DDT]. Now somebody may question the jurisdiction of the Customs officers to grant/reject Service Tax refunds – after all they are not Service Tax officers! To overcome this difficulty, the Board has appointed officers of Customs from Preventive Officers to Commissioners as Central Excise officers to exercise the powers in relation to Service Tax refunds. - Notification No. , Dated: December 30, 2011
Smuggle in a Correction: The Government has wisely used the exercise of amending several notification to align with the tariff changes to correct a mistake that went unnoticed for the last four years. Notification No. 25/1999-Cus dated 28.02.1999, exempts imported goods used for manufacture of excisable goods. Sl. No. 225 of List A of the notification is Palladium Tetra Amine Sulphate – 2834 9019. Now, this tariff heading is patently wrong. It has now been corrected as "38249090" along with the amendments to other notifications. Usually retrospective amendments are hidden in huge budget documents. - Notification No. , Dated: December 29, 2011