The Ahmedabad bench of the Customs, Excise & Service Tax Appellate Tribunal ( CESTAT ) has held that a contract for doing a particular job will not fall under manpower recruitment or supply agency service.
Shri Gunjan Shah & Shri Vipul Khandhar Chartered Accountant appeared for the Appellant and Shri Anoop Kumar Mudvel & Shri Ashok Thanvi appeared for the Respondent
Fitweld Enterprise, the appellant is carrying out various jobs of Fabrication work as per the drawing of M/s Anup Engineering Ltd. The jobs involved are setting up of components, smaw/gtaw welding, hydro testing and vacuum testing of the goods. For these jobs, the appellant is deputing their staff and workers for the execution of such work assigned to the appellant by their service recipient M/s. Anup Engineer Ltd. and on the completion of the job paying Excise Duty on their final product. The case of the department is that since the appellant is deputing their staff, their activity falls under ‘Manpower recruitment & supply agency service’.
It was submitted that the appellant has not provided the manpower to the service recipient but as per the contract work order and invoice, it is clear that they are undertaking a specific job of fabrication and various other engineering services. The service recipients are not concerned about the manpower, whereas their concern is only the completion of the job assigned to the appellant. Therefore, the activity of the appellant does not fall under ‘manpower recruitment and supply agency services’.
The Tribunal found that there is no dispute that there is no contract between the appellant and the recipient of service for the supply of several manpower and the charges are not based on wages of their manpower deputed.
It was evident that the appellant was assigned various engineering jobs, which are provided in or about the manufacture of a final product which is cleared on payment of duty by the recipient of service. This Tribunal time and again considered the matters that where the contract is not for manpower supply but for a particular job, the service will not fall under ‘manpower recruitment or supply agency service’.
The two-member bench comprising of Mr Ramesh Nair, Member (Judicial) and Mr C L Mahar, Member (Technical) viewed that the matter needs to be reconsidered by the learned Commissioner (Appeals) and set aside the impugned orders.
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