Sawhney was arrested by the department’s officers on August 30 for the company's pending liability for the financial year 2012-13, an official said. He was later granted conditional bail by a local court until September 3.
No response could be obtained from Net4 India. An email query sent to the New Delhi-based company remained unanswered.
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Sawhney has already paid Rs 25 lakh and has to pay Rs 75 lakh within 15 days. Further, Rs 1 crore a month has to be paid subsequently, the official added. “A major chunk of this liability has been collected by the company from its clients as service tax to be paid to the government exchequer, but was not deposited with the government,” the official added.
This is the third arrest this financial year by the department for failure to deposit service tax collected from customers. Earlier, one person was arrested in Kolkata for non-payment of the levy to the tune of Rs 79 lakh and one in Mumbai for dues of Rs 1.96 crore.
According to the Finance Act, any person who has collected service tax of more than Rs 50 lakh and fails to deposit the amount with the government even six months after the due date can be imprisoned for up to seven years. Service tax has emerged as a major source of revenue and the government proposes to collect Rs 1.8 lakh crore in the current fiscal, up from Rs 1.3 lakh crore last fiscal.