Service Tax - Does anybody know the accounting codes of the services?
Service Tax assessees are required to pay the Tax by a GAR-7 challan in the banks. This challan requires you to quote the accounting code for the service for which you are paying the tax. But does any one know these codes? The codes are allotted by the Principal Chief Controller of Accounts of the CBEC. Now this high sounding Authority takes its own sweet time to allot the numbers. The code for the Secondary and Higher Education Cess is yet to be allotted. The PCCA seems to be unaware of a tax called SHE.
But that alone is not the problem. Nobody in the country seems to be sure as to how many taxable services are there and what their code numbers are. Every day I get at least 10 calls asking for the code.
Many commissioners have issued circulars asking the assessees to pay the Service Tax through the GAR-7 form and with correct accounting codes. Now where do you go for the accounting code? The accounting codes are given on the reverse of the GAR-7 challan, if you can get one.
Now if you have a look at the reverse of the challan, you will find that there are 95 services and their codes listed. But we have 100 services. What about the missing five?
The mystery deepens! Its not actually five missing services but many more. The seven new services introduced in this year's budget are not included in the list. But if you add these seven, the number would be 102, but we have only 100 services. How this extra two services? Actually the reverse of the challan contains 5 services which do not exist. So if you take away those five from the list you are left with 97 services. But that still leaves three services uncovered. Yes! Three services simply do not figure in the list. They are
1. insurance auxiliary services concerning life insurance business;(zy)
2. technical testing and analysis;(zzh), and
3. foreign exchange broker (zzk)
Now, under what accounting code would any one providing these services pay the tax?
What can you say about a department which cannot allot the accounting codes for the taxes it wants to collect?