In various Union Budgets since 2005, the &ldquo;progress&rdquo; on the introduction of the Goods and Services Tax (GST) has been limited to the finance minister announcing he was happy with the progress being made by the empowered committee. It seems unlikely that the Budget speech this year will have anything more substantial than this.

Going beyond progress made by Empowered Committee

Business Standard

The earlier articles in this series have discussed several reform measures taken by CBEC to strengthen the service tax regime. However, one aspect that needs some re-design is the aspect of works contracts.

Vivek Mishra: Works contract: Still a work in progress

A typical Engineering, Procurement and Construction (EPC) contract in any field requires a number of specialised areas of expertise. As a result most of the EPC contracts are executed by an un-incorporated association of companies. Driven by the requirement of different skill sets, there is usually an equipment supplier and a turnkey construction contractor in the consortium. These consortiums are neither partnership firms nor joint ventures.

Vivek Mishra: Is revenue/cost sharing a service liable to tax?

Valuation of excisable goods is one of the most important aspects of excise law. Since the 1980s, there have been a large number of amendments in excise law and the related rules to reduce the scope for ambiguity and disputes on the issue of valuation. One of the important amendments was to change the value on which excise duty is levied, from &lsquo;normal price&rsquo; to &lsquo;transaction value&rsquo;.

Vivek Mishra: Fiat on Fiat Uno valuation

An earlier article in this series on Negative list regime discussed the definition of &lsquo;service&rsquo; as applicable in the new service tax regime. We would like to further explore one of the detailed aspects of this definition. This is covered by the third explanation to the definition. This explanation creates the legal fiction that two establishments of a person located each in the taxable and non-taxable territory should be treated and taxed as two separate persons. The deeming provision intends to tax the transactions between two branches or between head office and branch office, where one of either is located in the non-taxable territory and the other is located in the taxable territory.

Vivek Mishra: Service tax on branches overseas: Incomplete fiction

Tax reforms are an integral part of any fiscal reform process. The objectives of such reforms are to establish a tax system which is simple, economic and certain. The structure of excise duty, which emerged in the early 1980s could not be described in these terms. The reasons were; multiple rates, numerous exemptions, complex administration procedures.

Vivek Mishra: Central Excise should focus on modern financial audit

An earlier article in this column had already discussed the negative list of services and the impact of new definition of &lsquo;Service&rsquo; applicable from 1 July 2012. Now that the first payment of service tax under new regime has already been deposited, most of us must have derived a fair idea of new provisions and compliance requirements respective to our businesses.

Vivek Mishra: Reverse charge: Has it been cracked?

In continuation of our discussion in the previous articles on the Negative List regime, this article seeks to highlight the different &ldquo;declared services&rdquo; which are deemed to be services for the purpose of service tax. The concept of declared services, which supplements the definition of service as introduced under the Negative List regime has received limited attention, which might be a mistake.

Vivek Mishra: Declared services: Scope for overlaps

The Goods and Services Tax (GST) was originally to be implemented in 2010. Until 2009, no one took much notice, even though everyone agrees that the implementation of GST is an extremely momentous and far reaching tax reform. Then, in 2009, everyone &ndash; the media, industry and consultants of every stripe &ndash; got extremely excited about this reform that was just a few months away, at the time. However, GST was not implemented in 2010, or in the next two years.

Vivek Mishra: Will GST ever happen?

An examination of the tax reforms by the government over the past decade which comprise fundamental tax reforms like introduction of Value-Added Tax (VAT) and alignment of the Central Value Added Tax (CENVAT) and Service tax regimes, indicates that the focus of the government has been to move towards a tax regime that is simple and economical.

Vivek Mishra: Indirect tax: Need to align law with administration  

Developing countries like India face several challenges in managing their tax collections, particularly due to the lack of sophisticated and comprehensive IT systems in the economy. A IT systems-driven economy tends to produce reliable data in real time, through which informed tax collection decision can be taken. The previous article in this column had discussed briefly the challenges faced by the business community right from obtaining registrations, to complying with the tax compliances such as tax payment, refund claims etc due to the huge gap between the law that exists on paper and the manner in which it is implemented. This article will discuss in detail the priority areas for further action to achieve good tax governance.

Vivek Mishra