What's in a name? Everything if it relates to tax
It is no denying fact that providing taxable service would attract service tax, but now a days with the departmental officers -anti-evasion or auditors- and even officers from AG audit looking for cases of evasion, even mere mention of words remotely connected to the taxable service in books of accounts or advertisement pamphlets is enough to put a person in trouble. The Road Transport Authority of Andhra Pradesh has landed in trouble and a case was booked against it by the department, recently, not because they provide any taxable service, but because of a pamphlet printed by RTA. They printed a pamphlet - how to get a driving license- in the pamphlet they mentioned, among other things, about payment of Rs.50/- towards fee for driving test. This was treated by AG audit as falling under Testing and certification service and made an audit para and department has no option but to book a case. The moral of the story is "be careful about narration you give in books of accounts and avoid high sounding words". We will cover more on this soon.