Industry & Economy
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Taxation
98,000 service providers register under self-declaration scheme
K.R. Srivats
New Delhi
,
Dec. 2
AS many as 98,000 service providers have registered with the central excise department during the first 45 days of the Liberalised Self-Declaration Scheme, a revenue department official has said.
The Finance Minister, Mr P. Chidambaram, had announced the launch of the scheme during the last week of September. The main purpose of the scheme was to expand the number of assesses for service tax.
It allowed complete waiver of penalty to those service providers who registered before November and pay service tax. The scheme was open for 60 days and closed on November 30.
"The scheme has now closed and there is no further extension beyond November 30. About 98,000 service providers have registered under the scheme in the first 45 days. The data for the last 15 days of the scheme are not yet available as they are being collected," sources said.
As on March 31, 2004, the number of service providers registered with the excise department stood at 4,03,856. Between April 1and July 31 this year, the number stood at 28,109.
The Finance Ministry had launched a soft media campaign in September aimed at enlarging the service tax assessee base in the country.
The campaign sought to emphasis that the service tax administrators would be taxpayer friendly and that people should voluntarily register as service providers and pay service tax.
The Centre has budgeted service tax collections for the current fiscal at Rs 14,150 crore. Service tax collections in the first six months of the current fiscal had surged 70.5 per cent to Rs 4,799 crore against Rs 2,814 crore in the same period last year.
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