The Bombay High Court while directing the Authority to issue discharge certificate after payment held that SVLDR scheme to unload baggage of pending litigations centering around service tax and excise duty.
The petitioner, Munish Rajkumar Mahajan is engaged in providing security and detective agency services and was holding necessary registration under Service Tax law and now under GST law. The petitioner was paying appropriate service tax on the said services of security and detective agency provided by them.
The petitioner was called upon to show cause as to why the Service Tax inclusive of cesses which was not paid on taxable services provided by them during the period from April 2013 to March 2014, should not be demanded and recovered from them under the provisions of proviso to Section 73(1) of the Act.
The petitioner had provided the details of amounts as reflected in the Service Tax returns as well as shown under the Income Tax returns received for providing security and detective agency services for the entire period from 2013-14 to 2017-18. The petitioner agreed to pay Service Tax on the amount received in cases where the security services were provided by the petitioner other than body corporates.
The division bench of Justice N.R.Borkar and Justice R.D.Dhanuka has held that the impugned order is contrary to the object, the purpose and the intent of the Central Government to frame the said scheme as one time measure for liquidation of past disputes of central excise and service tax as well as to ensure disclosure of unpaid taxes by a person eligible to make a declaration and the basic thrust of the scheme is to unload the baggage of pending litigations centering around service tax and excise duty and deserves to be quashed and set aside.
“Writ petition is allowed in terms of prayer clauses (a) and (b) The petitioner is granted two weeks time for making payment of the said amount of Rs.15,78,968/-. The respondents to issue discharge certificates within thirty days from the date of the petitioner paying the amount,” the court said.
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