Ministry of Finance along with Directorate General of Central Excise Intelligence has initiated action against 16 insurance companies for wrongly availing Cenvat Credit worth Rs 1,200 to Rs 2,500 crore on the bogus invoices of the car dealers. Car manufacturers against whom an investigation was carried out made an agreement with these insurance companies for appointing them as preferred car insurance companies (PICs).
As per Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority (IRDA) regulations, other than insurance agents and insurance brokers approved by IRDA are not allowed to sell vehicle insurance policies. Ministry said that in order to avoid these regulations, the Insurance Companies ask the car dealers to raise invoices to show that the car dealers have provided the Insurance Companies services such as advertisement, renting of computers/ printers, training, arranging customer awareness program.
Further, the car manufacturers instructed their dealers to sell their insurance policies to PICs only, where PICs pay commission to the car companies and dealers in the range of 2-3% and 15-45% respectively on the value of the insurance policies. According to the rule the maximum commission payable for selling insurance policies is capped at 10% of the premium.
The investigation revealed and has been confirmed by the employees of the insurance companies and the car dealers that the invoices of car dealers were not permissible documents under the Cenvat Credit Rules, 2004 and the Service Tax Rules, 1994 for availing Cenvat credit by the insurance companies.
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