Excise exemption - Himachal and Uttarakhand – no exemption for peripheral activities
Notification Nos. 49/2003-C.E. and 50/2003-C.E., dated 10.06.2003, provide full exemption from excise duty to the units located in specified areas of Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh .
These exemptions are intended to encourage industrial development by creation of basic infrastructural facilities and to generate employment opportunities for the local people of these states. In order to ensure genuine industrial activities in these regions, it has been decided that benefits of duty exemption should not be admissible to goods in respect of which only peripheral activities like preservation during storage, cleaning operations, packing, re-packing, labeling or re-labeling, sorting, alteration of retail sale price etc. take place. This will ensure that the intended purpose of promoting substantial industrial/manufacturing activities through grant of fiscal incentives is fully met.
Even in respect of special category states in the North-east (States of Assam, Tripura, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Manipur, Nagaland, Arunachal Pradesh and Sikkim ), the benefit of excise duty exemption has been disallowed to units carrying out only such peripheral activities. For these states, this had been done in April 2007, but did they forget about Himachal at that time?
Accordingly Notification Nos. 49/2003-CE and 50/2003-CE have been amended vide notification No. 1/2008-CE dated the 18th January, 2008 so as to exclude certain peripheral activities from the operation of these notifications. The benefit of the notifications will not, therefore, be available to goods which have been subjected to only one or more of the following processes
1. packing or re-packing of such goods in a unit container or
2. labeling or re-labeling of containers,
3. declaration or alteration of retail sale price, etc.
Units carrying out only such processes would not be eligible for exemption benefit and would be required to pay duty as per normal procedure.
It has also been decided to prescribe a simple quarterly return for assesses availing exemptions under the said notifications in order to create a database about the actual impact of exemptions on the industrial activities in these regions.
Accordingly, rule 12 of Central Excise Rules, 2002 has been amended vide notification No. dated the 18th January, 2008 to prescribe for a Quarterly Return.
This Form has been notified as Form – A, vide notification No. dated the 18th January, 2008.
This return is to be filed with the jurisdictional Central Excise Commissionerate by the 20th of the subsequent month of the quarter to which the return relates. For the quarter ending 31st day of December, 2007, the units have been allowed to file the return by the 20th February, 2008. The return can be filed electronically or by post.
These changes have already come into force on 18 th January 2008 and already clearances affected during the last three days are illegal. For love or money, the notifications are not available anywhere. When the Board has taken the trouble of troubling the tax payers with all kinds of notifications, clarifications, circulars – why can't they take the trouble of making them public? We in TIOL have offered several times to do this service for the Board. Just give us the notifications and we will publish them for you in a minute and for free!