Kashish Jain
The Bombay High Court quashed a show-cause cum demand notice issued by the GST Commissionerate, Thane that demanded over INR 44.88 crores of excise duty for the years of 2015-16 to 2017-18.
This news comes as a huge relief to Supermax Personal Care Pvt Ltd. This is a firm that is involved in manufacturing and selling Supermax razor blades.
The Bench comprised of Justices Ujjal Bhuyan and Milind Jadhav and they were hearing a plea filed by Supermax Personal Care Pvt Ltd through its counsel Prakash Shah challenged the show cause cum demand notice issued to it for allegedly evading to pay the excise duty.
The GST commissioner had contended that the Supermax Personal Care Pvt Ltd had roped in Tigaksha, which is another firm into processing its products and even package the same at its factory at Una in Himachal Pradesh.
This firm then sends the completed products to various depots of the Supermax across the country. It is from these depots that the products are sold to consumers.
It has also been noted that Tigaksha enjoys an area-based exemption from paying excise duty.
The Commissionerate has argued that as Supermax gets excisable products through Tigaksha which does a lot of the packaging work, Supermax ought to pay the levied excise duties. It should not be allowed to argue that since it is the principal manufacturer and not the Tigaksha.
In its defense, Supermax pointed out that the final product is sold from its sales depots across the country. It was argued that the product wasn’t sold from the end of Tigaksha, which enjoys area-based exemption.
