The Chennai Bench of the Customs, Excise & Service Tax Appellate Tribunal (CESTAT) has held that Tribunal at the Appellate stage cannot club the refund claims of different quarters.
Shri Vikram Kataraya appeared for the Appellant and Shri S. Balakumar appeared for the Respondent.
M/s. Minvesta Infotech Ltd., the appellants are engaged in providing and exporting services of software development and maintenance services. They are registered with the Department under the category ‘Information Technology Software Services. They filed six refund claims on 5.10.2017 for an amount of Rs.84,54,926/- of accumulated CENVAT credit for the period October 2015 to March 2017 in terms of Rule 5 of CENVAT Credit Rules, 2004 read with Notification No. 27/2012-CE (NT) dated 18.6.2012.
After due process of law, the refund sanctioning authority rejected some of the refund claims on the ground of being time-barred and also as inadmissible CENVAT availed. On appeal, the Commissioner (Appeals) upheld the same.
The appellant submitted that the refund claims have been rejected alleging that they are time-barred in terms of Notification No. 27/2012. Even if the refund claims are time-barred, the appellant would be eligible to take recredit as per the Notification when the claims are denied. The appellant is not able to take recredit due to the introduction of GST, the Tribunal may consider the refund of the unutilized credit.
It was alleged that although the notification prescribes that the refund claims have to be filed for each quarter if the appellant had clubbed the claims about the quarter and made a single refund claim, there would not be any issue of time-bar. Shri S. Balakumar appeared and argued for the department. He supported the findings in the impugned order.
The CESTAT bench comprise of Ms Sulekha Beevi C.S., Member (Judicial)observed that the appellant has not filed one claim clubbing different quarters and there has been no clubbing of different quarters on the part of the appellant while filing the refund claims. The Tribunal at the appellate stage cannot club the refund claims of different quarters and then consider the period of limitation.
Further observed that when refund claims have been rejected as time-barred, they are not able to take recredit. It was viewed that the proceedings have emanated by filing refund claims under Rule 5 of CENVAT Credit Rules, 2004 read with Notification No. 27/2012, the adjudication has been only in terms of the above and not under the provisions of Section 142 of GST, 2017.
The CESTAT held that “the Tribunal being a creature of the statute cannot grant reliefs extraneous to the adjudication.”The impugned orders were up held and the appeals were dismissed.
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