Shri Krishna Kumar Kaushik vs C.C.E.&S.T., Lucknow

1. Whether Press Reporter may be allowed to see the Order for publication as per Rule 27 of the CESTAT (Procedure) Rules, 1982? No 2. Whether it would be released under Rule 27 of the CESTAT (Procedure) Rules, 1982 for publication in any authoritative report or not? Yes 3. Whether Lordships wish to see the fair copy of the order? Seen 4. Whether order is to be circulated to the Department Authorities? Yes

Appeal Nos.ST/51646 - 51647/2014-CU[DB]

[Arising out of Order-in-Appeal No.101-104-ST/LKO/2013 dated 23.12.2013 passed by the C.C.E., Lucknow]

Shri Krishna Kumar Kaushik Appellant

Vs.

C.C.E.&S.T., Lucknow Respondent

Appearance

Shri Anil Kher, Sr. Advocate

Ms. Anisha Mahajan, Advocate - for the appellant

Shri Govind Dixit, DR - for the respondent

CORAM: Honble Justice G. Raghuram, President

Honble Mr. R.K. Singh, Member (Technical)

Final Order Nos52279-52280/2015, dated 30.06.2015

Per Mr. R.K. Singh :

These appeals have been filed against Orders-in-Appeal No.101-104-ST/LKO/2013 dated 23.12.2013, which upheld the respective Orders-in-Original in terms of which service tax demand of Rs.3,43,073/- and Rs.94,160/- respectively were confirmed along with interest and penalties under Business Auxiliary Service (BAS).

2. The appellant has received commission from Amway India in connection with multi level marketing, which was held to be liable to service tax under BAS. The appellant has contended that he is not covered under the scope of BAS as the transactions involved sale and purchase of goods. Ld. counsel for the appellant fairly conceded that the issue has since be decided by CESTAT in the case of Mr. Charanjeet Singh Khanuja & Others Vs. CST, Indore & Others vide its Final Order No.51818  51855, dated 09.06.2015 and that these appeals can be remanded to the original adjudicating authority for deciding the matter in accordance with the said judgement. The findings/ decision of CESTAT in the case of Mr. Charanjeet Singh Khanuja & Others (supra) on the issues involved are contained in paras 12, 13, 14 and 15 thereof. These paras are reproduced below for ease of reference:-

12. According to the Department, the activity of the assessees is promotion or marketing or sale of the goods produced or provided by or belonging to the client. In our view, the activity which is covered under Section 19(i) is in relation to the promotion or marketing or sale of the goods produced by the client or provided by the client or belonging to the client. This expression, in our view, would not cover the sale of the goods by a person, which belong to him, as the activity of the promotion or marketing or sale of the goods by a person belonging to him would not constitute service. The assessees in these cases are distributors, who purchase the goods from Amway at the Distributors Acquisition Price (DAP)) and sell the same in retail at price not exceeding MRP fixed by the Amway. This activity of the Distributors, in our view, cannot be treated as promotion, marketing or sale of the goods produced or provided by or belonging to the client (Amway), as the sale of the goods purchased by the Distributors from Amway is not the sale of the goods belonging to their client  Amway. Once the Amway products have been purchased by a Distributor from Amway, those products cease to belong to Amway, but belong to the Distributor and sale of these goods by the Distributor would not constitute service to Amway. For the same reason, any incentive or commission received by a Distributor from Amway for buying certain quantum of goods from Amway during a month can not be treated as the consideration received for promotion or marketing or sale of the goods produced by or provided by or belonging to the client, more so, as this commission is not linked to the goods sold by the Distributor, but is linked to the goods purchased by the Distributor from Amway during a month and is in the nature of volume discount. Therefore, no service tax is chargeable on the profit earned by the distributors from sale of the goods in retail which had been purchased by them from Amway and on the commission earned by them every month on purchase of certain quantum of goods from Amway.

13. However, activity of a Distributor of identifying other persons, who can be roped in for sale of the Amway products/marketing of the Amway products and who on being sponsored by that Distributor are appointed by Amway as second level of distributors is, in our view, the activity of marketing or sale of the goods belonging to Amway and the commission received by the Distributor from Amway, which is linked to the performance of his sales group (group of the second level of distributors appointed on being sponsored by the Distributor) would have to be treated as consideration for Business Auxiliary Service of sales promotion provided to Amway. Therefore, service tax would be chargeable on the commission received by a Distributor from Amway on the products purchased by his sales group. However, in the impugned orders service tax has been demanded on the gross amount of commission and no distinction has been made between the commission earned by a Distributor from Amway based on his own volume of purchase from Amway and the commission earned by him on the basis of the volume of purchases of Amway products made by his sales group i.e. group of second level of Distributors appointed by Amway on being sponsored by the Distributor. For quantifying the service tax demand on the commission received from Amway on the volume of purchase made by the distributors sponsored /enrolled by a particular distributor i.e. the Distributors sales group, these matters would have to be remanded to the Original Adjudicating Authority.

14. Another objection raised by the appellants in appeals nos. ST/138 and 139/2009, ST/406/2010, ST/522 to 525/2010, ST/257,259, 433, 473, 502, 580, 1123, 1383, 1781 & 1802/2011, ST/56, 86, 126, 645/2012 and ST/1723-1724, 2337 and 2810/2012 and the respondents in appeals nos. ST/851 to 854, 863, 864, 865, 866, 867, 868, 869, 870 and 878/2012 is that the assesses are individuals and during the period till 30.04.2006, service tax was chargeable only on the services provided to a client by a commercial concern in relation to Business Auxiliary Service and the individual persons cannot be treated as Business concern. We do not accept this plea as a business concern can be a proprietary firm also which is owned by an individual and there is no difference between proprietary firm owned by a person and that person. When an individual engages himself in a commercial activity, he has to be treated as business or commercial concern. Therefore, notwithstanding the fact that w.e.f. 1.5.2006 the term, commercial concern in Section 65(105)(zzb) was replaced by any person, we are of the view that even during the period prior to 1.5.2006, the Business Auxiliary Service, even if provided by an individual to a client, was taxable. Moreover, in this group of appeals, the Appellants in Appeal No.ST/257/2011 and ST/259/2011 are proprietary firms who, without any doubt, are commercial concerns.

15. Another point of dispute is as to whether duty exemption under notification no.5/2006-ST would be admissible to the Distributors in this group of cases. In this regard, the Departments plea is that this exemption is not applicable when the taxable service is provided by a person under a brand name/trade name, whether registered or not, of another person and in this group of cases, the Distributors have promoted the sale/marketing of branded products. This plea of the Department is not correct, as in these cases the distributors are engaged in promoting sales/marketing of the products of Amway and they are not marketing or promoting any taxable service which is branded and the brand name belongs to another person. Marketing or sale promotion of branded products by a person/ commission agent does not amount to providing branded service by him and hence, marketing or sales promotion of a branded product does not come under the exclusion category as mentioned in the proviso to notification no.6/05-ST. In this group of cases, the eligibility of the Distributors (assessees) for the exemption notification no.6/2005-ST has not been examined and for this purpose also, these matters have to be remanded to the Original Adjudicating Authority.

3. In the light of the foregoing, we set aside the impugned Orders-in-Appeal and remand the cases to the original adjudicating authority for de-novo adjudication in terms of the aforesaid CESTAT order dated 09.06.2015.

(Justice G. Raghuram)

President

(R.K. Singh)

Member (Technical)

SSK

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