By Puloma Dalal, Jayesh Gogri, Mandar Telang Chartered Accountants
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Whether, letter rejecting application for centralised registration stating reasons therein is an appealable order? Held, yes
Facts:
The respondent’s request for centralised registration as service receiver in respect of GTA service was rejected by the department. CCE (Appeals) admitted appeal against the impugned letter of rejection and allowed centralised registration to the respondent on the ground that in respect of GTA service, the recipient of the service has to discharge tax liability and if the recipient maintains centralised accounting system in the head office, such office can be allowed to be registered with the department for discharging service tax liability.
The Revenue filed appeal against this order before Tribunal on two grounds viz. the letter rejecting respondent’s request for centralised registration is not an appealable order and therefore the appellate authority should not have entertained the appeal. Secondly, as per Rule 4(2) of the Service Tax Rules, only service providers are eligible for centralised registration subject to certain conditions and not service recipients.
Held
As regards the first ground, it is the settled position of law that if a letter conveys the ground of rejection and also the rejection, the same can be treated as an order eligible for appellate remedies. In Bhagwati Gases Ltd. vs. CCE 2008 (226) ELT 468 (Tri – Delhi) in a similar situation, this Tribunal held that “where the order impugned determines the right of the party or is likely to affect its rights, communication thereof cannot be said to be a communication simplicitor” and appeal against such communication should be maintainable. As regards the second ground that the respondent being a service receiver is not eligible for centralised registration, it was observed that it would defeat the objective of registration. The purpose of registration in indirect tax laws is to identify the taxpayer. In this particular case, the taxpayer or the person liable to pay tax is the receiver of the service and for making the payment of service tax, the respondent is required to get registered with the department. Hence there is no reason that the benefit of centralised registration cannot be granted, if the person satisfies the conditions for such centralised registration.
