Activities of Amazon do not amount to manufacture - AAR
AMAZON Seller Services Private Limited is a private limited company incorporated in India under the Companies Act, 1956. They provide an IT enabled/online platform to third party manufacturers/merchants to list and market their products; that this platform is offered on www.amazon.in for which a fee is charged to merchants for such online listing services; that for this purpose, as an additional service offering, they established a fulfillment center at the warehouse(s) that receives, stores, packages and ship the products listed online for sale by the merchant to the customers purchasing the products; the sale of goods will be directly by the merchants; Amazon only operates as an IT enabled platform which enables the sale by listing the goods and by providing incidental services such as stocking the goods in its warehouse and undertaking activities such as assortment, packing and stickering prior to delivery of the goods to the merchant's customer; after completion of the above activities, the goods are stored in their warehouse; upon a merchant's customer placing a purchase order on the merchant's product through Amazon's online platform, the goods are appropriately dispatched to the customer after performing the necessary activities.
The question before the Authority for Advance Ruling was whether the following activities of Amazon amounted to manufacture under Central Excise.
1. Activities relating to spectacles and frames (placing in case, tightening screws on eyewear) | 2. Bagging, | 3. Boxing, |
4. Bundling, | 5. Cleaning and lint brushing, | 6. Consignee detailing and Cardboard foot printing. |
7. debundling and jewellery correction, | 8. Filing, | 9. Folding and hanging, |
10. Freebies, | 11. hanging and ironing, | 12. Inserting bookmark, |
13. Inserting freebies, | 14. Inserting moisture absorbing tablets, | 15. Inserting warranty card, |
16. Inspection and testing, | 17. Jewellery correction, | 18. lint brushing and deodorizing, |
19. Placing the product in original box / pack, | 20. Polishing, | 21. Protective stickering, |
22. Sensitive material covering, | 23. set creation and rubber banding, | 24. shinning and coating, |
25. Sorting, | 26. Stickering, | 27. Stuffing and adding dunnage to glassware, |
28. Tagging, | 29. Taping, | 30. testing and installing batteries, |
31. tightening screws on eyewear), | 32. Touching up and re-stitching, | 33. Wrapping. |
The AAR ruled that these activities would not amount to manufacture or deemed manufacture under Section 2(f) of the Central Excise Act, 1944.
Please see:
1. M/s Amazon Seller Services Private Limited -
2. Amazon Wholesale (India) Private Ltd. -