Service providers to be registered by May 18

Kochi, May 13: Service providers, included in the 15 new categories in the finance bill this year, have to get themselves registered with the authorities by May 18, P Ayyam Perumal, Commissioner of Central Excise, Cochin, said.

Speaking at an interactive session organised by the Indian Chamber of Commerce and Industry(ICCI) here recently, Mr Perumal said that the service tax payable with effect from April 18 is 12 per cent with an additional two per cent education cess.

As per the newly introduced Service Tax (Determination of Value) Rules 2006, if the value received by the service provider was not consisting of wholly or partly money, it was the responsibility of the service provider to take the value of similar service provided by him to any other person in the course of ordinary trade for determining the exact service tax liability.

The Commissioner stated that as a measure of support to strengthen the competitiveness of the manufacturing and export sectors, both customs and central excise duties were brought down and the peak rate of excise duty was only 16 per cent and customs duty 12.5 per cent.

Since the revenue from these two important sources were coming down, the Government had introduced the service tax as the service sector accounted for nearly 54 per cent of GDP. A total of 96 services are now covered by the service tax.

UNI