How much Service Tax is collected? – No data really!
In a high profile meeting held by the Revenue Secretary recently with the top CBEC officers and the Principal Chief Controller of Accounts, the Chairman CBEC explained that Pr. CCA complies revenue collection upto the last day of the month, whereas, central excise duty and service tax for the month is to be paid by 5th /6th of the following month. As a result, Pr.CCA makes available the figures for the month of January only by 5th of March. Central Excise revenue figures are collected from field formations. In Central Excise, there are 93 field Commissioners with divisional and range offices who are able to collect revenue data from about 90,000 assessees. This would not be possible for service tax since there are about 9-10 lakh registered service tax assessees, out of which about 5.5 lakh are active assessees. He suggested that the Pr.CCA could try to make available service tax revenue collected upto 10th of the month, by the 15th of the same month.
Principal Chief Controller of Accounts stated;-
1. Service tax revenue collected upto the 10th of the month shall be made available by 12th of the same moth.
2. Service Tax revenue collection upto the last day of the month shall be made available by 4th of the following month as per current practice.
3. Revised revenue data for a month shall be provided by 15th of the following the following month when these are reported to the Controller General of Accounts ( CGA ).
4. Service wise revenue figures shall be complied and made available before 15th of the following month.
5. Instruction shall be issued to all PAOs to make available the above information to the respective Jurisdictional Commissioners.
6. All the above information shall be forwarded to Chairman (CBEC), Member (Excise), Member (Service Tax) and Joint Secretary ( TRU -II) for information.
7. The work of compilation of revenue may be outsourced to an outside agency.
Is it so difficult that the top officers of the country have to discuss this issue? Can't the banks be asked to send a report by mail to the Board every day? Can't we develop software that can capture data from all banks as soon as they accept payment? Maybe the Chairman, Revenue Secretary and the FM can every morning see in their computers the total Revenue collected till the previous day. In fact this can be made a public site and every citizen should be able to see the data.