CBIC notifies Procedures for Refund of Excise Duty on Purchase of Petrol or Diesel or Fuel Oil by Diplomatic Missions and their Officers for their Official or Personal use [Read Instructions]

The Central Board of Indirect Taxes and Customs (CBIC) notified the Procedures for a refund of excise duty on the purchase of petrol or diesel or fuel oil by Diplomatic Missions and their officers for their official or personal use.

The Diplomatic Missions and their officers are required to file claims for refund of excise duty on the purchase of petrol/diesel to the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) and thereafter MEA after due verification shall forward the claim with its recommendation to the jurisdictional Assistant/Deputy Commissioner of Central Excise for the purpose of processing/verification/sanction of the same.

(ii) Such claims should be supported by certificates and cash memos issued by the supplying firms as proof of the actual purchase.

(iii) The statutory time limit for making the refund claim would be one year from the date of purchase of the goods by the Diplomatic mission or Consular Office, as per the provisions of section 11 B of the Central Excise Act, 1944. The time limit of one year of filing a refund claim would be the date of filing the claim with the authorized officer of MEA.

Further, a refund claim is required to be sanctioned within three months of receipt of the claim and in case of delay in payment of refund beyond three months, interest is required to be paid by the department under section 11BB of the Act.

The statutory time limit of three months for sanction of refund (beyond which interest is payable) would start from the date of receipt of a copy of the refund application by the MEA. However, in order to ensure that the jurisdictional Central Excise Officer has sufficient time to process/verify the claim, a time limit of 30 days has been fixed for MEA to forward such refund claims to the concerned Assistant/ Deputy Commissioner of Central Excise along with its recommendation. In case, there is a delay in forwarding of such applications by the MEA beyond 30 days, which in turn results in the sanction of refund claim beyond three months, then MEA shall have to bear the incidence of interest payable to the diplomatic missions or their officers in terms of Section 11BB of the Act. The interest payable by the MEA shall be limited to the number of days beyond the initial thirty days, taken by MEA to forward the said claim to the jurisdictional AC/DC of Central Excise.

The sanctioning authority in all such excise duty refund claims upto a limit of Rs. 5000/- shall be Deputy/Assistant Commissioner of Central Excise (Technical) and in case of the claims above Rs. 5000/- shall be Additional/Joint Commissioner (P& E) / (P&V) of the Commissionerate.

“It is, therefore, requested to review the working of the structure for grant of refund of excise duty on the purchase of petrol/diesel/fuel oil to Diplomatic missions and their officers within your jurisdiction to ensure that they do not face any difficulty in receiving refunds. Difficulty experienced, if any in processing refund claim filed by the Diplomatic missions as per the aforesaid instructions, may be brought to the notice of the Board,” the CBIC in the circular said.

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