Dear Professional Colleague,
Sub : Difficulties in effective implementation of the Service Tax Voluntary Compliance Encouragement Scheme, 2013
As you are aware “Service Tax Voluntary Compliance Encouragement Scheme, 2013 (STVCES)”, has been introduced by the Finance Act, 2013 to encourage and broaden the tax base in the Service Tax, wherein, the assessee having tax dues for the period beginning on or after 1.10.2007 and ending 31.12.2013 can declare the service tax liability to department on or before 31.12.2013.
The Institute of Chartered Accountant of India, in its endeavor to support the Ministry of Finance and see the success of the Scheme, has been in regular touch with Ministry and giving suggestions for its effective implementation. However, the professional/ assessee, may be having some difficulties/issue in compliance thereof.
If you have any such issue(s)/difficulties, please let us know latest by December 8, 2013 (Sunday) upto 5.00 p.m. at idtc@icai.in so that a representation can be made to the Ministry on December 9, 2013 (Monday).
We hope your timely response well help us in sending the suggestion to the Ministry of Finance.
Regards
CA. Subodh K. Agarwal
President, ICAI
As per the latest available record only 59,472 Chartered Accountants are practicing throughout India. Further, there is ceiling of 45 Nos. of tax audit certificate, fixed for each CA irrespective of corporate & non-corporate assesses, without considering the demographic spread of CA’s throughout India. Because of ceiling, existing Non-CA Tax Professionals handling tax audit cases have to roam around in search of empty slots of CA Signature to give compliance in the case of their clients during due dates. This has also resulted in high cost of compliance, due to high demand and extra payment made for reservation of empty slots of CA Signature. These CA Certificates in Income-Tax Act are causing strict hurdle for voluntary compliance not only in Income-Tax Act, but also in other Central and State Govt. tax laws (Ex: In Finance Act, 2012 negative list introduced in Service Tax requiring the assistance of more tax professionals, but number of tax professionals are stand still on date). In this situation, Govt. has to relay on only 59,472 practicing CA’s for seeking compliance under Income-Tax Act.
In the above situation how come the above scheme will support from the assessees