No GST on Ocean Freight, Indian importers who paid GST eligible for refund [Read Order of Supreme Court]

The Gujarat High Court in the matter of Mohit Minerals held that the Notification No. 8/2017 – Integrated Tax (Rate) dated June 28, 2017, and Entry No. 10 of the Notification No. 10/2017 – Integrated Tax (Rate) dated June 28, 2017, which taxed Ocean Freight, lack legislative competency and the same were declared as unconstitutional.

An appeal was filed by the Union of India against the judgment of the Gujarat High Court, and the same has been now dismissed by the Apex Court.

The Supreme Court has also added that Indian Importers who have paid ocean freight are now eligible for a Refund.

The bone of contention of the Appeal was whether an Indian importer can be subject to the levy of Integrated Goods and Services Tax (IGST) on the component of ocean freight paid by the foreign seller to a foreign shipping line, on a reverse charge basis.

Now the Decision of the Supreme Court in this matter is as follows:

(i) The recommendations of the GST Council are not binding on the Union and States for the following reasons:

(a) The deletion of Article 279B and the inclusion of Article 279(1) by the Constitution Amendment Act 2016 indicates that the Parliament intended for the recommendations of the GST Council to only have a persuasive value, particularly when interpreted along with the objective of the GST regime to foster cooperative federalism and harmony between the constituent units;

(b) Neither does Article 279A begin with a non-obstante clause nor does Article 246A state that it is subject to the provisions of Article 279A. The Parliament and the State legislatures possess simultaneous power to legislate on GST. Article 246A does not envisage a repugnancy provision to resolve the inconsistencies between the Central and the State laws on GST. The ‘recommendations’ of the GST Council are the product of a collaborative dialogue involving the Union and States. They are recommendatory in nature. To regard them as binding edicts would disrupt fiscal federalism, where both the Union and the States are conferred equal power to legislate on GST. It is not imperative that one of the federal units must always possess a higher share in the power for the federal units to make decisions. Indian federalism is a dialogue between cooperative and uncooperative federalism where the federal units are at liberty to use different means of persuasion ranging from collaboration to contestation; and

(c) The Government while exercising its rule-making power under the provisions of the CGST Act and IGST Act is bound by the recommendations of the GST Council. However, that does not mean that all the recommendations of the GST Council made by virtue of the power Article 279A (4) are binding on the legislature’s power to enact primary legislation;

(ii) On a conjoint reading of Sections 2(11) and 13(9) of the IGST Act, read with Section 2(93) of the CGST Act, the import of goods by a CIF contract constitutes an “inter-state” supply which can be subject to IGST where the importer of such goods would be the recipient of shipping service;

(iii) The IGST Act and the CGST Act define reverse charge and prescribe the entity that is to be taxed for these purposes. The specification of the recipient in this case the importer – by Notification 10/2017 is only clarificatory. The Government by notification did not specify a taxable person different from the recipient prescribed in Section 5(3) of the IGST Act for the purposes of reverse charge;

(iv) Section 5(4) of the IGST Act enables the Central Government to specify a class of registered persons as the recipients, thereby conferring the power of creating a deeming fiction on the delegated legislation;

(v) The impugned levy imposed on the ‘service’ aspect of the transaction is in violation of the principle of ‘composite supply’ enshrined under Section 2(30) read with Section 8 of the CGST Act. Since the Indian importer is liable to pay IGST on the ‘composite supply’, comprising of supply of goods and supply of services of transportation, insurance, etc. in a CIF contract, a separate levy on the Indian importer for the ‘supply of services’ by the shipping line would be in violation of Section 8 of the CGST Act.

The Judgement is given below for reference: