Centre concentrating more on Service Tax collection:Jha

Hyderabad, Oct 3 (UNI) Commissioner of Central Board of Excise, Customs and Indirect taxes P C Jha today said the Union Government was concentrating more on Service Tax collection.

Addressing members of the Federation of Andhra Pradesh Chambers of Commerce and Industry(FAPCCI) in an interactive session here, he said the service tax, introduced in 1994 for three services has now been expanded to 106 services.

Stating that the service tax collection with five per cent at the time of introduction was only Rs 410 crore, he said the collection of service tax has reached to 65,000 crore within 14 years.

He said the service tax sector's share in the country's Gross Domestic Product was 65 per cent while its share in the tax collection was 1.11 per cent only.

He said the total revenue collection, including customs, excise and service tax during 2007-08 was Rs 2.80 lakh crore while the target for 2008-09 would be Rs 3.20 lakh crore with a 14 per cent growth rate.

The revenue collection was very encouraging, he said adding the indirect tax collections would exceed Rs 6 lakh crore by 2014-2015 as per the present projections.

Andhra Pradesh was very important for the Union Government for revenue collection, he said adding the revenue collection from the State was Rs 4,269 crore during 2007-08 and the target for 2008-09 was Rs 18,375 crore.

Regarding the introduction of Goods and Service Tax(GST) in the country, he said the Union Government had not taken a decision on it.

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