Service Tax Registration

What is Service Tax?

Section 66B of The Finance Act 1994 defines Service Tax and its chargeability. It is a tax levied by Central Government of India on services provided or to be provided excluding services covered under negative list. The rate of service tax for the services provided before 1st June 2015 was 12.36% including education cess and higher secondary education cess. But after 1st June 2015 the same has been revised to 14% flat vide notification no. 14/2015. The education cess has now been subsumed in the rate of Service Tax i.e. 14%.

Registration Requirement

Every provider of taxable service whose aggregate value of taxable service in a financial year exceeds Rs 9,00,000 is required to obtain registration under the Service Tax Laws.

Also, an input service distributor and every person liable to pay service tax (including recipient of service under Reverse Charge Mechanism) are mandatorily required to obtain service tax registration.

Registration Procedure

The application for registration has to be made in Form ST-1 in duplicate. It is available on www.cbec.gov.in. The documents to be enclosed therewith are: photocopy of PAN card, proof of address to be registered and copy of constitution /partnership deed etc. of the firm, if any.

Copy of PAN card is necessary as a PAN based code (Service Tax Code) is allotted to every assessee.

These forms are required to be submitted to the jurisdictional Central Excise office (in case of seven Service Tax Commissionerates, to the jurisdictional Division office). There are separate service tax commissionerates in Mumbai, Chennai, Delhi, Kolkata, Bangalore and Ahmedabad as mentioned in the previous chapter.

A person liable to pay service tax should file an application for registration within thirty days from the date on which the service tax on particular taxable service comes into effect or within thirty days from the commencement of his activity.

Registration certificate in ST-2 form is to be obtained after submitting necessary papers.