The Supreme Court on Friday issued notices to Jet Airways (India) Ltd, Flemingo Duty Free Shops, Thomas Cook and others on an application by the Airports Authority of India seeking recovery of tax dues on airport services from those firms.
A bench headed by justice Aftab Alam sought reply from Jet Airways, Flemingo Duty Free Shops and 27 others on the AAI?s application seeking recovery of service tax dues of more than Rs 18.66 crore from them.
AAI had earlier moved the apex court seeking transfer of petitions pending before various high courts of Delhi, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Kerala, Madras, and Bombay on the issue.
The Supreme Court in April 2007 issued notices regarding the transfer petitions and stayed further proceedings in various high courts.
Various companies, including Jet Airways, Flemingo, Thomas Cook and Siddhi Vinayak Enterprises, had challenged levy of service tax by AAI in the high courts. The high courts accordingly had stayed the recovery notices issued by the authority.
AAI had levied service tax on the licensees for airport services such as cargo and passenger handling and transit facilities provided by airlines and other companies. The authority had levied service tax on their billings for licence fee/royalty for duty-free shops at various airports.
AAI in its application on Monday said that service tax dues are payable by the licencees on these contracts which had either expired or are about to expire.
Seeking directions to various firms and contractors to renew their contracts, bank guarantees and pay the service tax dues, AAI submitted that it would be difficult to recover the dues from the firms after the licence period expired.
?The authority is the only medium who collects the service tax from the licensee and deposits the same with the service tax department,? the application stated.
Giving details of the service tax dues of various firms, it said that Jet Airways (India) Ltd has to pay tax dues of Rs 1.33 crore. Dues from Flemingo Duty Free Shops are more than Rs 7.37 crore, while Garuda Aviation Services and Thomas Cook have to pay around Rs 1.04 crore and Rs 41.77 lakh, respectively.