No Credit/refund on unsigned Computerised Invoices?
LAST month, in a RAC meeting of the Mumbai Central Excise Zone -1, the following issue was raised:
The invoices of Service Providers are computer generated and these documents therefore do not bear any signatures or official seals. It seems their repeated efforts to impress upon their service providers to provide signed and sealed invoices for mandatory submission to the office of Central Excise have not yielded the desired results till date. Thus, inability on their part to submit such invoices with signature and seal has come in the way of settlement of their claims for refund of genuine and legitimate service tax paid on input services as the documents do not have party's signature and official seal.
This piquant situation was being explained to various authorities of Central Excise, time and again, but without any favourable response. The excise authorities are still insisting that the exporter should furnish invoices with signatures and official seals for ready acceptance. The Service Providers, on their part, strongly maintain that as the invoices are computer generated, they need not have signature and or seals. In view of the current prevailing situation of this digital age, you are requested to give your written opinion that the Computer Generated Invoices and other documents of Service Providers do not require any signatures or official seals for claiming refund of Service Tax in the larger interest of the trade, if otherwise found to be in order. This is somewhat like an electronically generated receipt, which need not carry any signature, and these are accepted universally.
The Department replied:
Provisions of Section 4A of the Service Tax Rules, 1994 provide that the provider of Service shall issue an invoice which shall contain details as mentioned in the said Section including signature of the service provider or his authorized agent. In view of the said provisions, suggestion to accept e-bills which do not contain signature of the service provider/his agent, cannot be acceded to. However, since the issue raised by the Association involves all India ramifications it was decided to forwarded the said issue to CBEC for examination and appropriate decision.
Sir, there is no Section in the Service Tax Rules! This reply must have been prepared by some Inspector and approved by all his superiors right up to the Chief Commissioner. Okay it is a small mistake. But how do you solve the real problem? Is it mandatory that a computer generated invoice has to be printed and signed? You don't want any signature on your e-filed returns - why do you want signature on an e-invoice?
In any case when will the Board think of some facilitation and clarify this doubt?