Industry body Assocham on Thursday asked the government to provide exemption or concession on service tax on rentals to help the retail sector, besides scrapping the levy on dividend received by a subsidiary of a company. Representatives of the industry chamber today held pre-budget consultations with Revenue Secretary Sunil Mitra.
“Assocham stressed that the service tax on rentals is impacting broadly the retail sector, be either exempted or alternatively some abatement be allowed to this sector, in order to reduce the cascading effect of service tax in the retail trading operations,” the chamber said.
This fiscal’s Budget had imposed service tax on rentals of commercial property with retrospective effect of June, 2007.
The chamber also urged the government not to levy dividend distribution tax when dividend is received by an Indian company which is subsidiary of another company.
According to it, such a measure will remove cascading effect of dividend distribution tax.
Regarding indirect taxes, Assocham demanded that refunds should be given to all items for excise duty paid on inputs.
The Union Budgets of 2009 and 2010 had amended the credit rules to exclude cement, channels, CTD bars, TMT bar and other items use for construction of factory shed building or rain foundation or making a structures for support of capital goods from such refunds.
Assocham also asked the Government to exempt from excise duty the activity of packaging and repackaging carried out by the retailers or wholesalers.
