The Institute of Chartered Accountants of India (ICAI) organised a live webcast on service tax Voluntary Compliance Encouragement Scheme (VCES), 2013 in the Capital recently. The chief guest at the event, P Chidambaram, Finance Minister; Sumit Bose, Finance Secretary; Praveen Mahajan, chairperson, CBEC; lipika Majumdar Roy Choudhary, member (service tax), CBEC and Kaushal Srivastav, member (budget), CBEC addressed over 25,000 CA members and replied to more than 200 queries raised by the members.
Also present were CA Subodh Kumar Agrawal, president, ICAI; CA K.Raghu, VP, ICAI; CA Sanjay Agarwal, chairman, Indirect Taxes Committee; CA Atul Kumar Gupta, vice-chairman, Indirect Taxes Committee of ICAI.
The Finance Minister replying to the queries said that assessee may at his option choose to declare and pay tax for a part of the period covered under the amnesty scheme and balance under the normal provision of the service tax law. But, he advocated that paying tax under VCES would be more beneficial for the assessee, as there will be a complete waiver of interest, penalty and other consequences. VCES is one time amnesty scheme which will help the assessee to pay the tax dues and make a fresh start. He appealed to the ICAI and its members to popularise the scheme and encourage the assessee to avail the benefit of the scheme.
CA Agrawal appreciated the assurance given by Finance Minister that the declaration made by the assessee would be accepted in good faith. At the same time, he urged the members to complement the efforts of the Government towards sensitising the assessees and the various service providers with the benefits of the scheme.