Software giant Microsoft’s representatives will soon meet finance ministry officials trying to persuade them to impose excise or countervailing duty instead of service tax on packaged software.
The government had recently said packaged software makers would be required to pay service tax and not central excise (or countervailing duty in case of imported software).
This had happened after a series of representations from the packaged software industry and discussions within the finance ministry. Packaged software refers to a bunch of software offered to various PC marketing companies to come pre-loaded on branded computers.
“Microsoft is again coming to us with a request to do away with service tax on the packaged software and charge the central excise or countervailing duty. They say they have a genuine problem,” a senior ministry official said.
When contacted, Microsoft officials denied any such development from the company’s side.