Skip to main content

It’s time up for service tax evaders

With the Voluntary Compliance and Encouragement Scheme (VCES) coming to an end on Tuesday, the Union government has warned service tax evaders of “arrest and prosecution” from January 1.
“I would like to advise that from January 1, 2014, stern action will be taken against service tax evaders, and the provisions of the Finance Act relating to arrest and prosecution will be enforced in right earnest,” Finance Secretary Sumit Bose told journalists here on Monday.

There are 17 lakh registered service tax assessees in the country, but only seven lakh file returns regularly. The government has asked tax officials and sleuths to find out establishments and shops that have failed to pay up service tax, so that action could be taken after the expiry of the scheme. “In Delhi, leads will be dug out from sources of information such as the Delhi Government under the Shops and Establishments Act…,” official sources told The Hindu. “Delhi has 70,000 service tax assessees, but at least 1.5 lakh-2 lakh registered businesses.” Mumbai has 1.1 lakh service tax assessees.
The Finance Secretary said there had been an “overwhelming response” to the VCES in the last four days: 16,000 applications received for payment of Rs. 1,500 crore in tax dues.
Till December 29, 40,000 declarations, involving more than Rs. 5,500 crore, had been made.
“This would broadly correspond to Rs. 55,000 crore in services, which had escaped the tax net,” Mr. Bose said.
The scheme would not be extended, Mr. Bose said, as its duration was laid out in the Finance Act.
The service tax offices will be kept open beyond working hours on Monday and Tuesday. The government has extended the banking hours in the designated branches till 6 p.m. on December 31.
In addition, all Commissionerates have been advised to accept demand drafts/ payorders submitted by declarants under the Receipt Payment Rules.
The VCES lets declarants pay half of the declared tax dues for the five-year period (October 1, 2001 to December 31, 2012) by December 31 and the rest in another six months without interest.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

SC asks Centre to strike a balance on Rohingya issue (.hindu)

Supreme Court orally indicates that the government should not deport Rohingya “now” as the Centre prevails over it to not record any such views in its formal order, citing “international ramifications”. The Supreme Court on Friday came close to ordering the government not to deport the Rohingya. It finally settled on merely observing that a balance should be struck between humanitarian concern for the community and the country's national security and economic interests. The court was hearing a bunch of petitions, one filed by persons within the Rohingya community, against a proposed move to deport over 40,000 Rohingya refugees. A three-judge Bench, led by Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra, began by orally indicating that the government should not deport Rohingya “now”, but the government prevailed on the court to not pass any formal order, citing “international ramifications”. With this, the status quo continues even though the court gave the community liberty to approach i...
3 comments
Click Here To Read more »

High dose of Vitamin C and B3 can kill colon cancer cells: study (downtoearth)

In a first, a team of researchers has found that high doses of Vitamin C and niacin or Vitamin B3 can kill cancer stem cells. A study published in Cell Biology International showed the opposing effects of low and high dose of vitamin C and vitamin B3 on colon cancer stem cells. Led by Bipasha Bose and Sudheer Shenoy, the team found that while low doses (5-25 micromolar) of Vitamin C and B3 proliferate colon cancer stem cells, high doses (100 to 1,000 micromolar) killed cancer stem cells. Such high doses of vitamins can only be achieved through intravenous injections in colon cancer patients. The third leading cause of cancer deaths worldwide, colon cancer can be prevented by an intake of dietary fibre and lifestyle changes. While the next step of the researchers is to delineate the mechanisms involved in such opposing effects, they also hope to establish a therapeutic dose of Vitamin C and B3 for colon cancer stem cell therapy. “If the therapeutic dose gets validated under in vivo...
20 comments
Click Here To Read more »

"ISRO has capabilities to build geostationary satellites for air quality monitoring” (downtoearth)

Pawan Gupta's findings on trans-boundary movement of pollution (Punjab to Delhi) from biomass burning in 2015 spurred debates. He participated in discussions with Indian regulators early September at the Better Air Quality Conference in Busan on the advantages of using satellite data for air quality monitoring. He explains to Down to Earth how air quality monitoring is done using satellite data. How is satellite data used to measure air pollution? Satellites that provide information on atmospheric pollutants are normally (not always) in the low earth orbits (400-1000 km above the Earth’s surface). A single satellite can carry one or more remote sensing instruments onboard that look down to earth and obtain information about the object in the field of view of satellite sensor. The Earth receives electromagnetic radiation from the sun, which travels through space and reaches the earth-atmosphere system. The radiation then interacts with the Earth’s atmosphere and the surface...
1 comment
Click Here To Read more »