The Hindu : Business : Penalty waiver on service tax registrations

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Friday, Sep 24, 2004

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Penalty waiver on service tax registrations

By Our Special Correspondent

NEW DELHI, SEPT. 23. The Government today announced that it would not impose any penalty on service providers who register themselves by October 31. Also, the revenue authorities would accept the declarations at face value with no questions asked, the Union Finance Minister, P. Chidambaram, said here today.

Giving details of registration, he said till March 31 this year, 4.04 lakh service providers had registered themselves while another 28,109 filed registration forms between April and August.

The Minister said six new Service Tax Commissionerates had been created in the metropolitan cities of Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Chennai, Delhi, Kolkata and Mumbai which would exclusively handle service tax matters. Besides, the registration procedure had been simplified and special camps would be organised throughout the country, including remote places, and registration would be done on the spot.

"I am confident that a large number of service tax providers would take advantage of the provision that there would be no penal action against those who register themselves before October 31. In fact, I appeal to them to do so,'' the Minister said.

Tax collections

Mr. Chidambaram said service tax collections amounted to Rs. 4,125 crores in 2002-03 which went up to Rs. 7,888 crores in 2003-04, an increase of 91.2 per cent. The budget estimate for this year's collection was Rs. 14,150 crores which would be an increase of 79.4 per cent over last year's collections. However, collections during April-August 2004 amounted to Rs. 4,095 crores, an increase of 76.5 per cent over the collections in the corresponding period of 2003. Besides, these collections were on the basis of services specified in the 2003 budget whereas this year's budget had increased the number of services under the tax net and had also raised the rate to 10 per cent from 8 per cent earlier. Thus, collections are expected to be significantly higher this fiscal, the Minister said.

On other taxes, he said corporation tax till September 17 amounted to Rs. 17,206 crores against Rs. 13,448 crores in the same period of last year. Income-tax collections too were higher at Rs. 21,158 crores till September 17, up from Rs. 12,534 crores in the same period of last year. Customs collections had grown by 9.3 per cent till August this year while excise collections were up 7.53 per cent.

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