Chidambaram both warns and offers help to service tax assessees

The Central Board of Excise and Customs (CBEC) will target 1.2 million service tax assessees who have stopped filing returns, finance minister P Chidambaram said today even as he announced the setting up of a mechanism to discuss tax-related, sector-specific concerns of the industry.

"We are targeting 1.2 million non-filers and stop-filers of service tax," he said on the sidelines of the 28th conference of chief commissioners and director generals of Central Board of Excise and Customs (CBEC).

The finance minister said he had impressed upon the tax officials "that revenue mobilisation is the most important task of the department and they should achieve this target".

At the same time, Chidambaram also announced the setting up of a mechanism under which Parthasarathi Shome, adviser to the finance minister, will meet industry groups and associations once a week and take note of their concerns.

This will, however, be only a forum to address the concerns of a particular industry and not individual cases, the minister pointed out.

''There is a merit for having an institutional, structured mechanism to hear concerns of industry groups. At present, we get to hear about their concerns only once a year during the pre-budget discussions,'' Chidambaram said.

The finance minister also expressed confidence in meeting set targets for revenue collection for the current fiscal.

''In 2012-13, we achieved 21 per cent increase over the previous year's collection. With economy expected to grow certainly higher than 5 per cent, I think with growth close to 6 per cent, we should be able to collect 19 per cent more than last year," he said.

Chidambaram said service tax would have a share of more than Rs1,80,000 crore in the indirect tax target of Rs5,63,000 crore for 2013-14, adding that the poor response to voluntary compliance might force the government for a rethink on the scheme.

The voluntary compliance scheme allows service providers to pay up service tax dues without having to pay interest and penalty.

He said the government would soon issue clarifications of some frequently asked questions about the scheme.