The Hindu Business Line : Service is a drama but taxman is in the greenroom

Service tax axe is yet to fall on lawyers and doctors, barbers and cobblers, but has already sucked in pandal contractors and caterers, cheques and lockers. Now, with the taxmen sniffing at every nook to identify taxable service, one has to lo ok up what the word means.

"WHAT services canst thou do?" If that sounds like the Finance Minister himself asking around, you are most likely to respond promptly, "Me! Services!" But when King Lear asked thus Kent replied: "I can keep honest counsel, ride, run, mar a curious tale in telling it, and deliver a plain message bluntly: that which ordinary men are fit for, I am qualified in; and the best of me is diligence." I'm sure those in the North Block are capable of sifting Kent's words to see if keeping honest counsel can be brought under `opinion poll' or `intellectual property' services.

Shakespeare is lavish with `service', and you can readily spot more than two hundred occurrences of the word: "Your legs did better service than your hands," Queen Margaret would tell `long-tongued' Warwick in King Henry VI; "A fool, sir, at a woman's service, and a knave at a man's," says the clown in response to Lafeu's simple query, "Whether dost thou profess thyself, a knave or a fool?" in All's Well That Ends Well; and the humorous lines of Dromio of Ephesus in The Comedy of Errors: "Am I so round with you as you with me, That like a football you do spurn me thus? You spurn me hence, and he will spurn me hither: If I last in this service, you must case me in leather." In the Psalms of the Old Testament too one finds service: "He causeth the grass to grow for the cattle, and herb for the service of man: that he may bring forth food out of the earth (104:14)."

Service tax axe is yet to fall on lawyers and doctors, barbers and cobblers, but has already sucked in pandal contractors and caterers, cheques and lockers. Now, with the taxmen sniffing at every nook to identify taxable service, one is compelled to look for what the word means.

Concise Oxford English Dictionary defines the word as an act of assistance, and a period of employment with a company; as a verb, `service' means, "to perform routine maintenance, provide a service, pay interest on a debt, and mate with a female animal." Etymology, as explained by Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary traces the word to Latin servitium, condition of a slave, body of slaves, from servus, slave.

There is a long entry for `service' in Oxford Dictionary of Business, beginning thus: "Service is any activity or benefit that one party can offer to another that is intangible and does not result in the transfer of ownership of any physical object."

After listing the differences between goods and services, the dictionary classifies services into three groups, viz. services to trade (banking, insurance and so on), professional services (such as consultants and architects), and consumer services (for example, plumbing and cleaning.) What is more important for us is to classify services as taxable and non-taxable.

Look at the definition that Webster's 1828 Dictionary provides: Service, in a general sense, is "labour of body or of body and mind, performed at the command of a superior, or the pursuance of duty, or for the benefit of another." Webster's classifies service is voluntary or involuntary: "Voluntary service is that of hired servants, or of contract, or of persons who spontaneously perform something for another's benefit. Involuntary service is that of slaves, who work by compulsion." Seen thus, even if you perform voluntary service, tax may yet be involuntary.

It's always fun to see what Wikipedia has to say. It defines `service encounter' as all activities involved in the service delivery process. "Some service managers use the phrase `moment of truth' to indicate that defining point in a specific service encounter where interactions are most intense."

Wikipedia can lighten your mood by adding that many business theorists view service provision as a performance or act. "The location of the service delivery is referred to as the stage and the objects that facilitate the service process are called props. A script is a sequence of behaviours followed by all those involved, including the client(s). Some service dramas are tightly scripted, others are more ad lib. Role congruence occurs when each actor follows a script that harmonises with the roles played by the other actors."

Perhaps, only when you go to the greenroom, you find the taxman waiting there.

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