NEW SERVICE TAX CODING,ALL OLD CIRCULARS,CLARIFICATIONS WITHDRAWN
CBEC has issued a circular no.96 dated 23/7/2007 Service Tax.
Main heading of the circular is summersied below:
1.ALL OLD CIRCULARS ,CLARIFICATION AND COMMUNICATION WITHDRAWN
Paragraph 6 of the Circular states that,
“This circular supersedes all circulars, clarifications and communications, other than Orders issued under section 37B of the Central Excise Act, 1944 (as made applicable to service tax by section 83 of the Finance Act, 1994), issued from time to time by the CBEC, DG (Service Tax) and various field formations on all technical issues including the scope and classification of taxable services, valuation of taxable services, export of services, services received from outside India, scope of exemptions and all other matters on levy of service tax. With the issue of this circular, all earlier clarifications issued on technical issues relating to service tax stand withdrawn.”
Now, therefore, all the service providers need to re-assessee the services provided by them and the implication of withdrawal of all the previous circulars must be ascertained.
For an instance, for certain specific services, service providers were not paying service tax on Sub-contract services. But, with the withdrawal of all the circulars, every person is liable to pay service tax on each stage irrespective of the fact that he is main contractor or sub-contractor.
Sub-contractors in construction projects will now have to pay service tax. They will add to the various categories of small entities, which were so far not required to register themselves as service tax payers.
While their taxable amount will not go up, they will become responsible for maintaining individual tax accounts with the revenue departments. Until now, only the main contractors had to pay taxes.
2.NEW CODING SYSTEM FOR SERVICE TAX ISSUES
A). Three digit code will be allotted to each service.Services already taxable has been allotted a code.
B)For ease of reference, this coding system will be followed. Individual reference code is given for each issue. Unique three-digit reference code followed by the date of issue is given for each issue-wise classification. First three digits of the reference code relates to a specific taxable service. In addition to three digit codes for individual taxable services, three-digit codes are also provided for issues other than individual taxable services given as under:
996 – Services provided from outside India and received in India.
997 – Export of Services
998 – Valuation of taxable services.
999 – Miscellaneous purposes.
C) complete list of services with new code.
1) sorted by code
2) sort by name
Three-digit code is followed by a dot and two digits. Two digits after the dot indicate the issue clarified under that particular three-digit code. Digit codes are followed by a slash and thereafter the date of issue of the clarification is indicated.
3 New clarifications has been issued on the identical pattern of old clarifications on some services with new coding system.
Complete text of the circular 97/23/8/2007
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