Kolkata-Pune-Mumbai
27349 Points
Joined October 2007
Dear Friend,
Till the Finance Act 2005, most of the NGOs,
not being ‘commercial concerns’ were exempt
from charging service tax. The Finance Act 2006
has substituted references in the Finance Act,
1994 to the expression ‘commercial concern’
in relation to 17 taxable services, with the
term ‘person’ or ‘any person’. The implication
of this is quite wide and now even a nonprofit making entity, say a charitable trust
or a company registered under section 25 of
the Companies Act, is liable to pay tax and is
eligible to take credit of such tax paid on its
input services. Thus, if any of the activities of
an NGO falls under any of the services covered
in clause 105 of section 65 of Finance Act 1994,
care should be taken to ascertain service tax
implications.