Crowd-Sourced Information Available On Platforms Like Wikipedia Cannot Be Relied Upon To Fasten Tax Liability: CESTAT

The Tribunal opined that Wikipedia is an open source information available online and anyone can write about the topic and anyone else can edit it. Thereafter, somebody else can further edit it. It is not the opinion of any one expert but is only crowd-sourced information.

The bench, consisting of Justice Dilip Gupta (President) and P.V. Subba Rao (Technical Member), stated that the heavy reliance placed by both the Joint Commissioner and the Commissioner (Appeals) on Wikipedia is highly misplaced.

What is on Wikipedia today may not be what will be on it tomorrow because someone else may edit and alter the information. Such information cannot form the basis of any adjudication or fastening liability on any assessee, added the Tribunal.

In this case, it was alleged that the assessee/importer had fraudulently imported epoxy resin under the DFIA (Duty-Free Import Authorisation) licenses issued to certain Kanpur-based leather exporters.

DRI (Directorate of Revenue Intelligence) concluded that the DFIA licenses permitted the import of impregnating resin and that the importer had mis-declared epoxy resin as impregnating resin to fraudulently claim exemption under the DFIA licenses.

It was, therefore, proposed in the show cause notice to demand differential duty under section 28 (1) of the Customs Act, 1962.

The Joint Commissioner confirmed the allegations made in the show cause notice based on information available on Wikipedia. The Commissioner (Appeals) upheld the order passed by the Joint Commissioner.

As per the revenue, the Epoxy Resins cannot be impregnating resins and therefore, the imported goods were not covered by DFIA licences.

The case of the assessee is that Epoxy Resins can be impregnating resins, and the resins which it had imported were indeed such resins and therefore, they were squarely covered by the DFIA licences.

The Tribunal noted that the Joint Commissioner concluded that the assessee was not entitled to the benefit of the DFIA licences for the following reasons:

“The Wikipedia lists epoxy resin, synthetic casting resin, acetal resin, Ion exchange Resins, Solvent Impregnating resins (SIR) and unsaturated polyester resins as different types of synthetic resins and therefore, epoxy resin is not impregnating resin;….”

The bench opined that heavy reliance placed by both the Joint Commissioner and the Commissioner (Appeals) on Wikipedia is highly misplaced……..What is on Wikipedia today about say, epoxy resins today may not be what will be on it tomorrow because someone else may edit and alter the information. Such information cannot form the basis of any adjudication or fastening liability on any assessee…….

It is not within our field of expertise to decide if the CLRI's opinion was correct or that of CRCL, stated the Tribunal.

The Tribunal did not find sufficient evidence to say with certainty whether the epoxy resin imported by the assessee importer was not impregnating resin or not, and hence whether it was covered by DFIA or not.

In the absence of any evidence, the allegation in the show cause notice and the finding in the order of the Joint Commissioner and Commissioner (Appeals) that the Epoxy Resin imported by the assessee was not impregnating resin cannot be sustained, added the bench.

In view of the above, the Tribunal allowed the appeal.

Case Title: M/s Lasco Chemie Pvt. Ltd. v. Commissioner of Customs (Export)

Case Number: CUSTOMS APPEAL NO. 50208 OF 2020

Counsel for Appellant/ Assessee: Shri Alok Aggarwal and Shri Prachit Mahajan

Counsel for Respondent/ Department: Shri Rakesh Kumar and Shri Girijesh Kumar

Click Here To Read/Download The Order