1. The appeal of the appellants is directed against the impugned order passed by the Commissioner (Appeals), whereunder their appeal against the order-in-original was rejected. In the order-in-original, the demand of service tax of Rs. 3,12,320/- along with interest of Rs. 84,929/- was confirmed against them under Section 75 of the Finance Act, 1994 towards their liability for service tax. The service tax was levied on the appellants in respect of "the consulting engineer's services" rendered by them. The appellants challenges the order of the lower authority through the instant appeals.
3. Briefly stated, the appellants are engaged in the manufacturing of engineering goods falling under Chapter 84 of the Schedule to the CETA, 1985, the appellants had also recovered an amount of Rs. 62,46,402/- during the period from 01/04/99 to 31/03/2001 from their clients towards technical service charges. These activities of rendering technical services were however not disclosed to both Central Excise Authorities as well as Service Tax authorities. The said collection of technical service charges, were revealed only during the audit.
4. In terms of Section 65 (18) of the Finance Act, 1944, "any professionally qualified engineer or engineering firm who either directly or indirectly renders any service, consultancy or technical assistance in any manner to a client in one or more disciplines of engineering is defined as "consulting engineer" for the levy and imposition of service tax on the services rendered by such consulting engineer".
5. Before the adjudicating authority, the appellants contended that they manufactures (i) Industrial weighing machine (ii) material handling systems (iii) process automation and (iv) Bagging and weighing machines, and the installation and commissioning of the aforesaid machines are done at the site of the assessee's clients; that the sale contract contains a provision for erection and commissioning of these machines; that the erection, commissioning is linked only to the machines manufactured by the assessee under the contracts with their customers and the assessee is not a firm of a consulting engineer. In other words, the appellants pleaded that, in order to attract levy of service tax under the category of "consulting engineering" the service provider should be engaged solely in the process of rendering consulting services and not a firm like the appellants where the consulting engineer services are rendered for installation and erection of the machine at the site which they themselves have manufactured.
6. These very submissions were made by the Ld. Counsel, for the appellants before us. As against this submission, the Ld. DR had invited our attention to the judgment of the Hon'ble High Court of Karnataka reported in 2001 (130) ELT 726 (Kar) in the case of Tata Consultancy Services v. Union of India and the judgment of Hon'ble Karnataka High Court reported in 2002 (140) ELT 341 (Cal) in the case of M.N. Dastur & Company Ltd., v. Union of India, wherein it has been held that, the Act does not make any distinction between different categories of service providers, be they individuals, partnership concerns or the incorporated companies.
7. In the light of the judgments as referred to above, it is obvious that, in the case before us the appellants having rendered the services of a consulting engineer to a client, are liable to the service tax. We accordingly find no reasons to interfere with the orders passed by the lower authorities. Accordingly, the appeals fail and the same are rejected and the orders of the lower authorities are affirmed.