Supplementary invoices & the Six month embargo in availing CENVAT credit
NOTIFICATION 21/2014-CE (NT) inter alia did immense damage to rule 4 of the CCR, 2004 and is to take effect from 1st September, 2014. Inasmuch as it has imposed a "six month" embargo in availing CENVAT credit on the strength of any of the documents specified in sub-rule (1) of rule 9 of CCR, 2004 in respect of ‘inputs' & ‘input services'.
What this amendment has also indirectly done is to bring within its ambit "supplementary invoices" issued by a manufacturer and/or a service provider.
There is a school of thought that the six-month computation in case of a ‘supplementary invoice' would be from the date of issuance of the ‘parent invoice' i.e. the supplementary invoice ought to have been raised within six months from the date of issuance of the ‘parent invoice' and that any invoice issued thereafter would not be considered as a ‘document' prescribed under rule 9 of the CCR, 2004.
You have to hand it to the officers for coming out with such a radical interpretation!
But then, unless such interpretations are nipped in the bud, the clamour for raising such objections grows and soon it will gain monstrous proportions to be accommodated in a LAR Half Margin or a DAP!