E payment of Service Tax mandatory
Please see TIOL-DDT 431 21 08 2006 – “Service Tax – mandatory payment of Service Tax for major assessees – Board keeps it a top secret” where we questioned, If the Board wants to make e-payment mandatory, why can’t it issue a notification publicly instead of making the DGST write DO letters? Or is the DGST an independent authority that it decides for the Board?
Board has now issued the notification. The Notification stipulates that the assessee, who has paid service tax of rupees fifty lakh or above in the preceding financial year or has already paid service tax of rupees fifty lakh in the current financial year, shall deposit the service tax liable to be paid by him electronically, through internet banking.
The notification is out, but where is the procedure? How to go about it? Immediately after TIOL published the notification, I was bombarded with phone calls from worried assessees anxious about the procedure. I didn’t know whether to be proud or sad when an assessee told me that when he called up his Service Tax Superintendent to find out how to make e payment, the officer told him to contact Taxindiaonline. Yet another assessee told me that a Joint Commissioner whom he called up wanted him to visit his office to get the details. “How can I give it on phone, man?”, the Joint Commissioner is said to have told the assessee. “If I can pay the tax online, why can’t I get the information online?”, wondered the assessee. A representative of a very popular TV channel (which is a sort of a super cop catching corrupt government officers) told me that he also called up a senior officer who asked him to come to the office to get the information. Yet another assessee told me that an officer told him, “we held a seminar, why didn’t you attend it?”. This poor assessee was not aware of the seminar!
E-payment is really comfortable and convenient, but should it be done with such undue haste? Why can’t the government give a little time for the system to be understood? Now the next payment is to be made latest by 5th of October. Now to make the electronic payment, the assessee has to open an account with the designated bank, get money deposited there and get a username and password. All this will take at least 15 days. How then are they going to fulfill the requirement of e-payment by October 5th? Should the Board go out of the way to complicate matters? And what should be done when the computer of the assessee or the bank does not work or the net is down or the site is not available for maintenance? Is there an alternate mechanism? Nobody seems to have thought over these problems.
Anything to do with computers, the department had always managed to put the cart before the horse. In the early nineties when the department wanted to go for a massive computerization, first the air conditioners arrived and not knowing where to put them, the senior officers grudgingly allowed them to be installed in their rooms. Then the computer tables and chairs arrived. Nobody knew where to put them. Then again the senior officers grudgingly agreed to use them as lunch tables in their rooms. Then the computers arrived and there were neither rooms nor tables to put them in or on. Then a stage came when a computer was considered a good piece of decoration in the room. But using a computer? Ask your steno to do it!
Notification No. dated the 21st September 2006
Click here for the procedure and the list of banks.