MUMBAI, June 1: The finance ministry expects to rope in roughly three lakh professionals in the net of service tax by bringing 23 new sectors under the purview of service tax, departmental sources claim. The additional revenue from these services will be around Rs 220 crore.The new list includes professionals like chartered accountants, cost accountants, company secretaries, market research agencies, real estate agents and architects who are in the organised sector and are easily identifiable for bringing them under the tax net, they added.There are still certain sectors which are not partially unorganised like the field of interior decorators and will be difficult for the department to ascertain their tax liability, sources said.According to western regional member, Institute of Chartered Accountants of India (ICAI), Uttam Aggrawal, the removal of transporters and catering and pandal contractors from the net of service tax will have little impact on the tax collection. Since they were brought underthe purview of the service tax, the department has not collected any taxes from these two areas mainly due to the nation wide resentment from these two sectors respectively."The life will become more difficult for chartered accountants as even now the payments made to us come after six months delay", he lamented. The tax experts felt that the government should have extended the service tax net on advocates also.Service tax collections in the country registered an 18.5 per cent increase at Rs 1,204 crore till February 1998 as against Rs 1,015 crore during the previous year ending March 1997. It will, however, fall short of the targeted Rs 2,000 crore for 1997-98.
