| Spelling out the strategy for the current fiscal year, S C Mathur, chief commissioner of central excise, Gujarat, said that names of service providers will be collected from big corporates, government departments and PSUs and action will be taken against defaulters. |
| The department had achieved more than 100 per cent growth in service tax collection in Gujarat in 2004-05. |
| Meanwhile, 60 per cent of the service providers will go out of the service tax net fro this year. All the service providers, whose aggregate value does not exceed Rs 4 lakh in a financial year, will be exempt from service tax. |
| The Gujarat zone of the service tax commissionerate is likely to lose about Rs 10 crore due to the exemption. |
| "The service tax collection has been impressive in 2004-05. The department collected Rs 595.98 crore as service tax, which is Rs 312 crore higher than that of the previous year," Mathur said. |
| He added that the central excise, customs and service tax revenue put together, Gujarat collected 16 per cent of the country's total indirect tax. |
| Mathur said that the excise revenue realisation for the zone in the 2004-05 fiscal stood at Rs 7,563.59 crore, which is Rs 1941.77 crore higher than that of last year. The customs revenue in the zone stood at Rs 1,745.75 crore. |
| Mathur said that the preventive wings of the zone booked 271 cases against evading units last year. A duty of Rs 334.40 crore and a spot recovery of Rs 7.45 crore were imposed. The internal audit branches raised 1959 audit paras involving a revenue of Rs 64 crore and a spot recovery of Rs 11.99 was effected. |
| A service tax commissionerate has been created in Ahmedabad with effect from September 15, 2004 and prior to that, the central excise department looked after service tax. |
| "All those service providers who have an aggregate value of less than Rs 4 lakh will have to surrender their registration certificates, or they will face penal action," said Mathur. |
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