KARACHI: The Customs Appellate Tribunal (I) deciding 150 appeals filed by importers of tiles including M/S Home Life, Waheed Sons, MSW & Co and MAW & Co of Lahore directed the Pakistan Customs, Valuation to accept the declared prices/ value declared by the appellants as actual prices being transactional value of the goods for deciding custom duty and other levies.
The tribunal headed by member judicial I Muhammad Nadeem Qureshi and Muhammad Yahya, member Technical-I heard the counsel for appellant as well as respondent custom officials in detail.
The counsel for appellant maintained that appellants imported number of consignments from China of tiles of various sizes during the years 2010 and 2011. They filed the Goods Declaration (GD) for imported goods under section 79 (1) of the Customs Act 1969 and paid custom duty and taxes as per Customs value under the self-assessment.
The custom rejected the said assessment and custom values was determined under section 25-A vide valuation ruling no 216 dated 03-02-2010 giving rise to a series of litigation since 2010. The litigation included appeals before custom authorities, high court appeals (Islamabad and Sindh), intra court appeals and leave to appeal before Supreme Court of Pakistan and lastly instant appeals before the tribunal.
The counsel for appellant throughout maintained that orders passed by the custom authorities were illegal being against the fact of the case and in absence of any material besides the impugned assessment was without issuance of any show cause notice. It was also contended that appellants were being treated discriminately as respondents have not compared the tiles of other importers with reference to specification, brand, composition, identical goods and hence proceedings against appellants are baseless.
The departmental representatives denying the grounds of appeal contended that assessment of disputed goods was made as being “Glazed Porcelain unpolished tiles under Valuation Ruling 538 of 2013 dated 16-1-2013issued under Section 25-A of the Customs Act.
The tribunal after hearing arguments in detail and perusing the record held that no evidence is available to prove that assessment was made according to section 81; sub section 4 of the Customs Act or sub section 5 of section 81 was complied with. The tribunal finds the assessment as time barred. The bench also held that orders passed by the custom authorities were not speaking orders hence “laconic and sketchy”.
The tribunal referring to dozens of case laws held that if an Adjudicating Officer did not accept “transactional value” for determination of custom duty and other taxes, the denial could have some mandatory reasons based on legal proposition. The bench holding that in this particular case section 25 A is not applicable instead only section 25 (in sequential order) is applicable and hence the appeals are allowed.