Excise Notification exempting alcohol

By Vijay Kumar

Our understanding all these days was that there is no Central Excise duty on alcohol fit for human consumption; it is supposed to be a state subject. In yesterday’s DDT there was a reference to Notification No. 34/2006-Central Excise, Dated: June, 14 2006. The Notification exempts in the case of hotel or stand alone restaurant, office equipment, professional equipment, office furniture and consumables, related to its service sector business and food items and alcoholic beverages under the Served from India Scheme.

A friend wrote in “how can they exempt alcohol when it is not dutiable at all?”. He also provided the answer. This is a copy and paste from the Customs Notification No. 92/2004-Cus., dated 10-9-2004, which is identically worded. For Customs, the exemption is correct as there is customs duty on alcohol but the same would not apply to Central Excise. Board’s “Copy and Paste” technology usually runs into trouble! Copying and pasting is okay but there should be a little reading after pasting and obviously there is no body in the Board to do that.