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2015 (9) TMI 316 - AT - Service TaxManagement Consultancy Service - appellants were advising the clients about various aspects relating to Management. The services are not executionery in nature and are clearly advisory in nature. - Held that:- Regarding the appellants’ contention that the said services would be appropriately covered in the category of support services of business or commerce, or Business Consultancy Service, the same is not tenable because as per the definition of support service for business or commerce, the activities covered thereunder are essentially executionery in nature. - the impugned services rendered to Transocean/Tidewater categorically and unambiguously fall within the ambit of Management Consultancy Service. - Decided against the assessee. Export of services - amount received from ONGC to be treated as receipt in foreign exchange or not - Held that:- Such payments do not reflect in the Govt. records as foreign exchange received in the country nor such payments reflect in the trade statistics of import and export. These are not mere procedural aspects and have legal and policy consequences. - It is pertinent to mention that once the RBI is taken in the loop, such transactions will not go unnoticed for the purpose of the relevant data bases of India’s international trade and foreign exchange transactions and will also not remain under the radar of the laws relating thereto. Thus, the impugned payments made by ONGC to the appellants do not merit to be treated as payments received in foreign exchange. - Decided against the assessee. Extended period of limitation - Held that:- For a service provider of this stature, something positive has to be shown to demonstrate that they had made reasonable efforts or had taken reasonable steps to ascertain legal position with regard to taxability of their impugned activities for the purpose of forming their purported reasonable belief. Mere presumption of non-taxability can never be equated to “reasonable belief” in that regard. Thus, the conclusion is inescapable that they deliberately did not take registration and pay the impugned service tax with a view to escaping the liability and when caught, pretended to be having reasonable belief about the non-taxability. Thus invocability of extended period and mandatory penalty is unexceptionable. Demand of service tax confirmed - penalty u/s 78 reduced - Decided against the assessee.
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