Service Tax- How many services are there?
Do you have any idea as to how many taxable services are there? May be when they started it with three services, they thought that the letters of the English alphabet are enough to take care of all the possible services to be taxed. After they finished with all the 26 letters from a to z, they brought in aa, ab… and so on. This went to ridiculous levels that today we have services categorized up to zzzzd – that makes it 108, but of these 8 services “b, c, zd, ze, zf, zg, zp and zzj” have been omitted. So that makes is a hundred services. But why can’t they give numbers to these services instead of confusing letters like zzzzd? CBEC seems to have made an earnest effort in this direction. In the draft circular issued yesterday, they have classified the services – rather clarifications on services by numbers. Now at least for clarifications, each service will be known by a three digit code from 001 to 100. Four numbers 996 to 999 are reserved for clarifications on issues like export of services, valuation etc,. This of course means that they can impose service tax on 895 more services and this will take care of the situation for the next few years. Now they should use these three digit codes for the services in the Act also. Hopefully they will do it in the next budget.