Southern States - Andhra Pradesh   

Service providers asked to register with Excise Dept.

By Our Staff Reporter

VISAKHAPATNAM FEB. 28. With the increase in Service Tax on some services from 5 per cent to 8 per cent in the Union Budget presented by the Finance Minister, Jaswanth Singh, on Friday, the Chief Commissioner of Customs and Central Excise, T.V. Sairam, has requested all the service providers concerned to obtain the Service Tax registration with the Central Excise Department at the offices of the Commissioner of Central Excise and Customs at Visakhapatnam, Guntur and Tirupati.

The eight per cent tax would be imposed on the following services with effect from the date of enactment of the finance bill, he said in a press release. Commercial vocational institutes, coaching centres and private tutorials, technical testing and analysis (including health and diagnostic testing), technical certification, maintenance and repair services like the annual maintenance contracts and other maintenance services and authorised repair services, commissioning and installation services.

The other services that attracted the 8 per cent Service Tax were Internet cafes, franchise services, business promotion and support services including customer care services which included product-launch, customer education programmes, conduct of seminar, data warehousing, help-desk services, front-office management, enquiry bureau, etc. and port services to minor ports, authorised automobile services to multi-utility vehicles.

However, the computer-enabled services like data processing, networking, back office processing and computer facility management would not attract the Service Tax.

Service Tax had been extended to banking, another financial services of FOREX brokers, and it was also proposed to tax the proprietorship, partnership and other individual concerns providing such services.

The present exemption from Service Tax on hotels had been extended beyond March 31 while the exemption of the tax had been withdrawn on the payments received in convertible foreign exchange. A provision had been made to allow credit on the Service Tax only when the payment was made by the service user in respect of the service he or she received.

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