The assessee, an electricity company, under the earlier VAT regime was exempted from payment of service tax. In the new GST regime also the exemption had been provided in similar terms as earlier.
However, for the incidental or connected services, the Government of India had issued a clarification dated 1-3-2008 to the effect that services such as application fee for releasing connection of electricity, rental charges against metering equipment, testing fee for meters, transformers, capacitors, etc., labour charges from customers for shifting of meters or shifting of service lines and charges for duplicate bill would be taxable services.
On the basis of such clarification, the revenue authorities issued summon dated 28-3-2018 to the assessee calling for information and documents for the financial years 2012-13 to 2016-17. The assessee filed a writ petition stating that the above clarification dated 1-3-2018 could not operate retrospectively and at any rate could not apply to a period prior to introduction of GST. The action of the authority to call for information for the period as far back as the financial year 2012-13 was, therefore, wholly unjustified.
Whether notice required to be issued to concerned parties – Held, yes
Citation: [2018] 93 taxmann.com 428 (Gujarat)