Thinking on our feet at CESTAT*Custom Excise & Service Tax
By Veeraraghavan
We were working on a very important case that involved a humongous demand of Rs 255 Crores pertaining to Central Excise. We had preferred an Appeal before the tribunal and got the recovery proceedings stayed. However, the case got posted for final hearing almost two years after we got the stay. When the matter was listed to be heard on merits, the judges wanted the matter to be adjourned to a later date (usually 6 or 7 months later), as they wanted to hear only Appeals that were filed prior to 2008. However, they decided to dispose Appeals filed after 2008, provided, the issue in the Appeal was already squarely covered by a precedent.
Though our case was not squarely covered by any previous decision, with an intention to bring speedy justice to our client, under the aegis of our senior, we worked out a new dimension to our case so as to bring it within the ambit of previously decided case laws. The Case was heard and got adjudicated in our favour. Every case needs a good legal strategy, in this case, we deployed an astute legal strategy that ensured that the case got heard and the client got speedy justice.
GST: Walk-through Presentations
One of India’ biggest Indirect Tax reform i.e. GST was implemented. India Inc had to adapt to the new system. The Experts were on demand. So was Astute. Chennai, which is the Detroit of India, is a manufacturing hub in India. The effect of change i.e. GST was most directly felt by the Manufacturing sector. We were called in to implement GST for quite a few of them. Different teams were constituted to handle different clients.
We set out to implement GST by giving a detailed orientation to the employees about the concepts and changes in the GST. We had to face an intellectual and challenging crowd who threw questions at us by asking us the applicability of GST for various business exigencies and complex business transactions. We handled them with aplomb, as, we were in regular practise of making presentations about various tax issues in office before our colleagues. The tact and the knowledge gained out of making these presentation helped us to make the GST presentations successfully.