The Hyderabad Bench of the Central Excise and Service Tax Appellate Tribunal (CESTAT) in the case of Oren Hydrocarbons Pvt Ltd v Commissioner of Customs held that where the conditions for availing a refund of service tax on GTA services were not met, the benefit on the said service cannot be obtained.
The appellant is a manufacturer of barite powder wherein they receive the raw material, crush it into powder and transport it to their Chennai unit from where it is exported. The officers in an investigation found that the appellants were not discharging service tax on GTA services which they have availed for transporting the goods.
The issue before the Tribunal was whether the GTA services received by the appellant were exempted from service tax liability
The Coram constituting of P.V.S. Rao and Rachna Gupta as Technical and Judicial members held that no evidence to corroborate the fact that the threshold limit for the application of the exemption has been met was placed on record, disentitling the appellant of such exemption.
Further, the exemption is available by way of refund of tax paid on specified services used for export of goods. The aforementioned condition does not infer that the service tax shall not be paid. In the present case, GTA services were availed for transporting goods from their Kodir unit to Chennai. Thereafter, the Chennai unit, in turn, exported the goods. While transportation may be in relation to the export of goods, there is no sufficient evidence to show that this transportation is actually for the export of goods.
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