: A company engaged in stem cell banking has filed a writ petition in the Madras High Court seeking to bar the Directorate-General of Central Excise Intelligence and the Commissioner of Service Tax from collecting service tax from it.
Life Cell International (P) Ltd., T. Nagar, submitted that stem cell banks were always exempted from the tax as was clarified by the Union Health Ministry in May 2013.
Justice S. Vaidyanathan has admitted the petition and ordered notice.
The matter has been posted for January 27.
The company submitted that its services, among other things, involved collecting umbilical blood and tissue in a special kit by sending its paramedics to the hospital concerned, carrying out appropriate process on the umbilical blood by placing it in pilot bags and sealing the main bags and storing it in cold storage to make it available when needed for transplantation.
Its activities were kept out of the levy of the tax. This being so, the authorities had collected Rs. 3 crore from it as tax.
The petitioner’s explanation that it was entitled to exemption was not accepted by officials.
The interpretation of an impugned notification that the petitioner’s service activities were exempted only from February 17, 2014 was not legally maintainable.
Hence, the petitioner sought to prohibit the collection of tax from it from July 1, 2012 to February 16, 2014. It said the amending notification was only clarificatory in nature.
The petitioner’s explanation that it was entitled to exemption was not accepted by the officials
