Tata Motors' plea: SC notice to 23 states, 3 UTs

The Supreme Court has issued notices to 23 states and three UTs on a petition by Tata Motors seeking quashing of the Central Sales Tax Appellate Authority's decision asking it to pay Central Sales Tax to the tune of around Rs 14 crore (Rs 1 40 million) on sale of bus chassis to the Andhra Pradesh government.

A Bench headed by Justice S H Kapadia while refusing to stay the impugned judgement issued notices yesterday to the Central Sales Tax Appellate Authority, 23 states and three Union Territories.

While the Appellate Authority, which has been constituted to resolve conflicting findings relating to supply of similar goods attracting local sales tax or CST, had held that such sales constituted sales in the course of inter-state trade.

It had asked Tata Motors to pay CST without any further directions for refund or adjustment of the local taxes paid to Andhra Pradesh on such sales.

However, the Authority had partly allowed the company's plea to remand the matter back to the Commercial Taxes Tribunal, Jharkhand, for examining the transactions made to other states.

According to the assessee, it was fit case for grant of stay of recovery of CST in order to avoid double taxation as local sales tax had already been paid in respect of all supplies to various states, which was almost equal to the CST demanded.