8-Digit Central Excise Tariff in three days?
THE Government continues to shy away from parting vital information that may cause damage to the system, if assessees get to have information on important laws. The 8 digit central excise tariff is most likely to come into force from 28.2.2005. There is no press note, no publicity and no clarifications. On 28th February, the Budget will be presented and along with it the new tariff comes into force. In the best of times, the Board notifications and clarifications are confusing and the Board is all set to beat its own record in this feat. The Central Excise Tariff (Amendment) Act, 2004 (5 of 2005) is ready but the Board is totally silent on this major change; maybe they want to give a surprise to the assessees and officers.
Though the Government has not yet notified the date from which the 8 digit tariff comes into force, the four notifications issued yesterday indicate that the new tariff comes into effect from 28.2.2005.
1. Notification No. 1/2005 and 2/2005 Central Excise dated 24.2.2005 stipulates that for all the notifications, the tariff headings in the old tariff shall be substituted with the new tariff headings.
2. Notification No. 3/2005 - Central Excise dated 24.2.2005, is an exemption notification prescribing nil rates (and a couple of concessional rates) for all the nil rated items as the present tariff.
3. Notification No. dated 24.2.2005, wants the headings of the new tariff substituted in the MRP based notifications.
All these notifications are to be effective from 28.2.2005 and they mention about the commencement of the Central Excise Tariff (Amendment) Act, 2004 (5 of 2005). From this we can safely assume that the new tariff will come into force from 28.2.2005! With four notifications, the Government has amended over a hundred notifications substituting thousands of numbers. But who will substitute and who knows what these numbers are? Hardly any one has seen the new tariff.
But don't worry, there is nothing to panic. The new Central Excise tariff is almost identical to the Customs tariff. So get hold of the Customs tariff for the headings, go back to the old Central Excise tariff, match the headings and look for the rates of duty! Very Simple!!!
But what causes concern is the totally irresponsible and unpredictable behaviour of the Government. One day they justify 35% abatement to pharma products, the very next day they increase it to 40% and the notification is not made available to the public. Draft circulars are placed before the public and a huge tariff is replaced and they don't tell anyone? Are we working in some sort of emergency? Is the tariff some strategic defence secret? And should laws be smuggled in unknown to the people who are affected by them? We, in Taxindiaonline are ready to take the Government's laws to the people within minutes of them being made available to us and though it costs us heavily to do this work, we are offering all the new notifications in our free section, where any one can access without even a formal log in, as a facilitation, we often find it difficult to get hold of this legislation. In the olden days it used to take thirty days for a notification to reach the field. Now we offer to take it there within thirty minutes. But for some powers that be, thirty days seem to be good enough. DDT fervently hopes that the Government in its magnanimity will recognise that there is a big wide world beyond North Block, where things like computers and internet exist and where matters speed. You can see all the notifications in our What's new section.
On a personal note, I had the privilege to have a peek at the draft of this new tariff and I had offered some suggestions, which I am sure must have been ignored with contempt.
Incidentally, in the draft I saw, electricity finds a place in the tariff under
2716 00 00
ELECTRICAL ENERGY
Is it now excisable?