Poor response to service tax amnesty scheme: Chidambaram

The Union Finance Ministry’s service tax amnesty scheme has so far fetched poor response.

Finance Minister P. Chidambaram said here on Tuesday that he had told the Revenue Department to “accept” the declarations under the “Service Tax Voluntary Compliance Encouragement Scheme 2013.” Under the scheme, a registered service provider can avail himself of relief if he makes the declaration by December 31.

The Government was targeting 10 lakh registered service providers, who had defaulted and had piled up service tax arrears, the Minister said.

The Revenue Department was making efforts to increase the level of acceptances of declarations through review and corrections, he said.

“Of the 7,504 applications, only 102 have been rejected. I have asked the officials to review those rejections,” Chidambaram added. He said the rejection was 1.3 per cent. “I have also instructed the officials to help service tax payers in correcting the anomalies in their declaration. The idea was to bring the rejection below one per cent, he said.

The Finance Minister said the service tax evaders would have no recourse after the deadline expires. “The revenue intelligence department had prepared dossiers on such offenders,” he added.

Chidambaram said 13 chronic service tax evaders had already been arrested; the first being in Kolkata. He said courier service provider, multi-media firms, engineering and construction companies were among the prosecuted defaulters.

jayanta.mallick@thehindu.co.in