Finance Minister P Chidambaram on Wednesday said service tax amnesty scheme VCES is a lifetime opportunity as such offers are unlikely to come again in the next 20 years, even as he warned that evaders would eventually be “identified and reached”.
“Countdown has begun and the last date is December 31. Government has made a fair and generous offer, a one-time offer that is not likely to come your way for at least a couple of decades. Therefore, it is in the best interest of everyone to take advantage of the offer,” he said. Service Tax Voluntary Compliance Encouragement Scheme (VCES) was introduced from May 10 as a one-time amnesty scheme to pay service tax dues for the period from October 1, 2007, to December 31, 2012, without interest and penalty.
“The last amnesty scheme was announced in 1997 called VDIS, it is now 16 years later that we have launched such a scheme for service tax,” he said at a meeting in Bangalore on VCES with representatives of trade, industries. “If anyone feels another scheme will come next year, I’m afraid they are mistaken. These schemes cannot be announced every year. There should be a good reason why we have to do so.”
Addressing a similar meeting in Hyderabad later in the day, the Finance Minister said: “If you think that a scheme will come again next year or a scheme will come in 2015, you are wrong. “Such schemes cannot be announced every year. There is a Supreme Court judgement on VDIS (which) actually ties up our hands in announcing a scheme on the lines of VDIS (Voluntary Disclosure of Income Scheme).”
“That is why we have to modulate the scheme, so that it does not violate the directions of the Supreme Court. This is a once in a lifetime opportunity (and) certainly will not come for the next 20 years,” Chidambaram said. Chidamabram said there are as many as 17 lakh service providers who have voluntarily registered as service tax members and only 7 lakh among them have paid taxes.
Hinting that the Government will view tax evasion as a serious offence, Chidambaram said so far 15 persons have been arrested for service tax-related violations. “We started by introducing service tax and administering it in a benign way, with paying dividends- 17 lakh service tax providers voluntarily registered as a service tax members..... but only 7 lakh actually paid service tax, the remaining 10 lakh did not pay service tax.
“We can classify them as no-filers or stop-filers. No-filers are those who have never filed service tax, stop- filers are those who have paid for a year or two....Who later stopped filing service tax,” he said in Bangalore. Stating that much has changed in the last 17-18 years, and today Government has technology and huge amount of information about tax payers, he said, “If we are able to identify a tax evader and we want to look at what he is doing, believe me we have the information and the technology- which can provide 360 degree profile of that person.”
“.....Eventually people will be identified, people will be reached. That is how we have been able to identify a number of people who are chronic tax evaders, and I’m sorry you must have read about in the paper, we had to arrest them.”