Export of Service- In the instant case, the appellant had filed five separate applications for Refund claim of tax paid on export of services i.e. zero-rated supply on payment of IGST, through GST Portal, in prescribed Form GST RFD-01 along with all requisite documents, with the jurisdictional CGST office as per Circular No. 125/44/2019-GST, dated 18-11-2019.

That five separate Show Cause Notices (GST-RFD-08) in all the five refund claims were issued to the appellant which sought to deny the refund claim under Section 54 of Act alleging that the services rendered by the appellants were ‘intermediary services’ as per Section 2(13) of IGST Act, 2017, and as per Section 13(8)(b) of IGST Act, 2017, the place of supply of such services shall be the location of the supplier of services, i.e. (location of the intermediary service provider). It was thus alleged that the services provided by the appellants were not ‘export of services’ as it did not fulfil condition (iii) of Section 2(6) of the IGST Act, 2017, which clearly indicates that ‘export of services’ means the supply of any service when ‘the place of supply of service is outside India’, but in the instant case the place of supply of services was within India.

In the instant case the appellants are a go-between the foreign universities and the students in India though he had contractual agreement with only the universities and the universities only cannot be said to be the only recipients of services provided by the appellants. Therefore, they were covered under the definition of ‘intermediary’ as per Clause (13) of Section 2 of the Integrated Goods and Services Tax Act, 2017. Hence, the contention of the appellants that their activity was that of marketing and promotion of the academics/universities/colleges is not tenable.

Held that- the refund claims were not hit by time limitation, but the services provided by the appellants to the Foreign Universities and the students in India were provided only as a representative of foreign universities and not as an independent service provider; that such services were not covered under export of services and thus exigible to GST; that the place of supply shall be governed by Section 13(8)(b) and not by Section 13(2) of IGST Act, 2017. Place of supply of services was the location of service provider in India.

This authority is in conformity with the sanctioning authority, that the services of the Appellant are not ‘Export of Services’ under the GST Act, and refund claims of the appellant are inadmissible and liable to be rejected.