12.2 It is submitted that in the grounds of appeal, the DCA has been considered as supplier of goods, whereas in the case on hand, the DCA is an intermediary between the principal and the customer. The role of the DCA is to receive orders for goods on behalf of the principal and take the guarantee of timely payment realization from the customer to principal. The customer makes payment directly to the principal, it will never routed through DCA. Because of such guarantee, in the case of default in timely payment by the customer to principal, DCA has to make payment to the principal for such default on behalf of the customer. This transaction between DCA and principal is on behalf of customers. This is nothing but short term finance to customers. Of course, payment goes to principal, however, it is the finance given to the customers which DCA has to recover as he is in no way otherwise concerned with the goods supplied by the principal to the customers. Therefore, this transaction between DCA and customer has to be delinked from the transaction of sale and purchase of goods between principal and customer. This being separate transaction, the customer is answerable to DCA and not to the principal. The short term finance so provided by DCA to the customer is not an obligatory or free at all. The consideration decided between DCA and Customers for such short term finance is interest which DCA is receiving from the customers along with the payment made on his behalf to the principal. So providing short term finance and charging interest from customer is a separate transaction and is separate activity / service as defined in Section 2(105) of the CGST Act, 2017. Further, the definition of ‗supplier‘ in section 2(105) does not include every agent of a supplier but only those agent that are ‗acting as such‘ on behalf of such supplier in relation to the goods or services or both so supplied. Therefore, to be included as a ‗supplier‘, an agent should be acting as such or, in other words, acting as a supplier. DCA do not act as supplier at any point in time and hence cannot be treated as supplier under the GST law. It being so, the section 15(2)(d) has no relevance as the interest so charged by the DCA for his separate service provided to the customer is not towards delayed payment for the goods supplied by the principal and therefore, it cannot form part of taxable value in terms of Section 15(2)(d) of the CGST Act, 2017.
