High sea sales of imported goods are akin to inter-state transactions. The question is that whether the high sea sales of imported goods would be chargeable to IGST twice i.e. at the time of Customs clearance under sub-section (7) of section 3 of Customs Tariff Act, 1975 and also separately under Section 5 of The IGST Act, 2017.
The council has decided that IGST on high sea sale (s) transactions of imported goods, whether one or multiple, shall be levied and collected only at the time of importation i.e. when the import declarations are filed before the Customs authorities for the customs clearance purposes for the first time. Further, value addition accruing in each such high sea sale shall form part of the value on which IGST is collected at the time of clearance.
The above decision of the GST council is already reflected in the provisions of section 3(12) of Customs Tariff Act, 1975. The importer (last buyer in the chain) would be required to furnish the entire chain of documents, such as original Invoice, high-seas-sales-contract, details of service charges/commission paid etc, to establish a link between the first contracted price of the goods and the last transaction.
In case of a doubt regarding the truth or accuracy of the declared value, the department may reject the declared transaction value and determination the price of the imported goods as provided in the Customs Valuation rules.
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