Carry your tiffin boxes on 29th April
IN, we carried the story of restaurateur Janardhan Nair from Kalamassery, Kochi and his decision to get rid of the air-conditioners and buy portable air-coolers for keeping his patrons cool and also keep away service tax.
After reading our story 'Get hot inside restaurants, thanks to Service Tax', Santosh Shetty from Mangalore wrote to us. He says -
"I have an open-air vegetarian restaurant and an air-conditioned family room attached. Due to Service Tax imposition from 1 st April, 2013, patrons of non AC sections are also required to be billed with the Service Tax component and this always leads to verbal tiffs. Even those who order for parcels at my restaurant are required to be charged the Service Tax amount. For these take-away food customers, I do not provide any service, yet they are to be billed the ST amount. No doubt, till the time their parcel is ready, they sit in my restaurant and also have a glass of ice cold water. So, nowadays, I tell them, it is for this ‘wait' that I charge them service tax! Sir, the government seems to have found in us an easy target to collect service tax. Does the government expect us to leave our job at the cash counter and file service tax returns or are they creating employment opportunities for ST preparers and also an avenue for more corruption for its officers? We used to earlier fight with the State governments regarding imposition of unreasonable amount of VAT and now we are required to deal with the bigger brother. It seems that the government is not eager to listen to us and so we are left with no option but to go on a nationwide closure of all hotels on the 29th April, 2013 demanding the withdrawal of Service Tax."
DDT hopes that the government is taking cognizance of this clarion call.