New facility in ICES - Exemption - Education Cess and Higher Education Cess on CVD
EDUCATION and Higher Education cess on CVD was exempted for all goods vide Notification No. 13/2012-Customs & 14/2012 - Customs respectively. Hence no additional field was provided in the BE format to claim exemption from Education and Higher Education cess on CVD in the Customs ICES.
In this Budget, Notification 18/2014-Customs and 19/2014-Customs were issued withdrawing the exemptions given vide 13/2012-Customs and 14/2012-Customs for certain electronic goods.
Hence to incorporate such changes, new Column has been introduced in B.E. Format/Assessment to enable importers to claim exemption from this levy based on Notification No. 13/2012-Customs read with Notification No. 18/2014 (as amended).
In the revised procedure, Education & Higher Education Cess on CVD will be levied on all goods by default. Importers who are eligible may claim exemption in the new column by quoting 013/2012 Sl.No. 1. It is to be noted that by quoting 013/2012 Sl. No. 1 both Education Cess and Higher Education Cess will be exempted. So there is no necessity of claiming Notification No. 14/2012 for exemption of Higher Education cess separately.
This change has resulted in modification of BE message format. Updated BE message format is placed at ICEGATE website for information. The importers may need to revise private RES packages being used by them to file Bills of entry remotely.
An Advisory by ICES informs that calculations may be checked manually and any discrepancies may be informed to the directorate immediately. Similarly in many other notifications, the ICES system has limitations in completely validating the eligibility of the exemption. The Appraising/Out of charge officers must ensure the eligibility of the goods for the exemption before final clearance.
We hope clearances are not held up for want of updating the software.