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2014 (9) TMI 783 - AT - Service TaxRefund of service tax - Banking or Financial Service - primary authority rejected the claims for refund on the ground that provisions of Notification No. 22/2006-ST were inapplicable as also on the ground that the some claims were barred by limitation - claim of the assessee based on Notification 22/2006-ST was accepted by the appellate Commissioner - Held that:- The power of the appropriate legislature to levy tax is subject to limitations specified in the Constitution of India. There is nothing in the Constitution which engrafts a limitation on powers of an appropriate legislature to levy a tax on rendition of ‘sovereign’ service. Service provided by RBI or the assessee under authorisation of the RBI does not also fall within the ambit of Articles 285 and 289 of the Constitution. The power to grant exemption from the liability to tax is conferred on the Central Government under Section 93 of the Act in plenitudinous terms. Such exemption may be granted either in a specific case or in respect of a generality of cases, with or without conditions. In the exercise of such broadly conferred power, the Central Government issued Notification No. 22/2006-ST, clearly enumerating the transactions, the taxable services and the provider or recipient of services, in expressly specified circumstances, which alone are notified to be eligible to the immunity to tax. It is a settled principle and one that is too well established, that exemption Notifications are to be strictly and rigorously construed. We also prima facie discern no ambiguity in the taxable services and circumstances of such rendition/receipt which are spelt out in Notification No. 22/2006-ST. - the generic principles of agency cannot be canvassed to expand the scope of exemption to the assessee, since the exemption Notification clearly limits the grant of immunity only to taxable services provided by or to the RBI and in enumerated circumstances. - grant of refund stayed.
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