VCES 2013 – Who Should Be Worried

The government of India showed its benevolent side by introducing the amnesty scheme which tends to pardon tax evaders from all penalties that come hand in hand with dodging the call of the authorities. Basically, under this scheme which is also known as the Voluntary Compliance Encouragement Scheme, evaders will be required to part with their gross amount due, without the imposition of additional interests to inflate the same to an unbearable burden. 

How to Use VCES 2013

Today, as the year 2013 is on the way to say goodbye, there are a number of defaulters who have plenty to worry about. For those who may have taken VCES 2013 for granted and may have thought that they would be better off staying in the dark, are losing their one and only chance to get their records straight with the authorities. From 1^st January 2014, the regular rules of dealing with evasion and defaulting will apply; leaving no one any scope for making any amends whosoever.

Those who may have woken up to the alarm a few days ago, there is sure to be a lot to hurry and worry about. From arrangement of required paper work and plenty to assess and organize, one is sure to be left flustered by the time disclosure is made. The happier lot includes those who sought the scheme it the earliest and have been written off with a clean chit. 

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Things You Must Know About Service Tax Payment

 

Service Tax Amendments 2013

Being an Indian citizen, if you provide a taxable service, you would be liable for paying a certain amount of service tax to the government. Once you register under service tax, you would be called an assessee. Failing to pay your service tax returns on time could land you in major legal troubles. Even a slight mistake in paperwork can create problems for you. Service tax laws are complex and amendments are made every so often. You need to keep yourself updated with the recent changes so you can avoid the pitfalls.

According to a recent speech by the Finance Minister, there are around 17,00,000 registered assessees, but only around 7,00,000 individuals file their service tax returns. As far as these numbers suggest, more than half of the registered assessees have stopped filing their returns. It is not possible to go after each one of them. Instead of hunting them down, the government has taken a different approach. The Finance Ministry has taken steps to motivate tax defaulters to pay their due taxes.

To encourage tax defaulters to pay service tax, the government has introduced a one-time scheme called Voluntary Compliance Encouragement Scheme or VCES. Defaulters may take advantage of the scheme, provided they file truthful declaration of their service tax dues since 1^st October, 2007 and make the payments in one or two installments within the deadline. If tax defaulters come forward and voluntarily file their due tax returns under the VCES scheme, they will not have to face the legal consequences that come with not paying taxes. Things like penalty, interest and other serious consequences will be waived. 

What Can You Do to Sail Through Service Tax Audit

Service tax audit once imposed cannot be avoided at any cost. However, one can make the process easier to live through by following certain guidelines on compliance.

Pinch and launder as much as you wish; hide and suppress as much as you want; but when the eyes of the sovereign authority falls on dramatic misappropriation, be assured, there is not much you can do but wish upon a falling star for pardon, because the government is sure to make you pay for good. Evasion of duties is a criminal offence that can amount from mild to severe penalties depending upon the nature of evasion, the time period involved and the amount due. When the authority suspects that a certain assessee is involved in non-payment, the concerned individual / entity is slapped with service tax audit. 

The procedure involves a team of appointed professionals to visit the premises of the entity and assess the records of the same thoroughly and completely to determine what the former has been into hiding. The penalties are awarded to the guilty after ascertaining their nature of default which includes complete evasion or, partial evasion where the non-compliant party pays only a certain small part of the due amount. From imposition of a huge amount of fine and interest to cancellation of license or both anything can be expected as an outcome of the assessment. While there is not much that can be done about the outcomes, one can always ensure that further complications are not generated as the procedure is in progress.

For this, the assessee will have to ensure that they do not cause any deliberate problems like hiding figures or, documents or even making any other attempt to thwart the duties of the professionals. If such dramatic obstacles are created by the former, the amount of penalties that can be given out as a result can be far more than what would have been due. Allowing the professionals to work their way and extending complete cooperation is the only way to sail through the process of assessment. Trying to outsmart the attending team will only amount to further difficulties. Considering the fact that trying to seek amnesty through the process is also an option, complete compliance should be embraced as the only route to some relief.

How Easy Can Service Tax Deposit Be

Service tax deposit can now be made through online medium. This has made the process far easier than ever before.

The days of paper work are long past. Natural forest resources of Earth simply cannot handle the requirements of the human race that is running way past a herculean eight billion. Keeping track and record of transactions, payments, receipts etc through manual paper filing is practically an impossibility that not many would like to continue with. Even the traditional rigid governmental procedures of India are beginning to comprehend the dismal consequences of paperwork considering the fact that about a seventh of the world population resides within our restricted boundaries. Dramatic changes in the thinking of the geniuses behind the desk have shown in the form of appreciable outcomes in the one of the most important aspects of the system that can be named as taxation. 

Till very recent times, eligible entities had to make service tax deposit through the manual methods which involved collecting a couple of forms or, more from the concerned vendors, filling it up without mistakes and dropping the same along with the cheques in the registered banks to complete the procedure. Following up is crucial as far as payment of duties is concerned, which again is quite difficult in the traditional manual method. However, at present, the government has ensured E filing of payments which has nullified the requirement of any form of paperwork whatsoever. Here, the concerned assessee is required to log in to the respective website, input their required details, fill in an e form and make a simple bank transfer to complete the payment process.

This is a matter of minutes and can be done from the comfort of one’s own home / office. Tracking of the payment through online medium at the same time, is completely hassle free. An even greater step towards the attempts at complete removal of paperwork from the world of taxation is the move made by the government to convert all filing of returns from manual procedures to electronic. This is to say that, from now on, only E filing of returns will be acceptable and none others. Learning the online method of tax payment is not difficult. Referring to quality websites can help in removing all doubts and confusion about the same.

How Easy is Service Tax Compliance

Not paying your duties may be very easy in India; what matters though is coughing up the punishment sum when all efforts aimed at hiding the skeletons in the closet fail. You will only be a fool to believe that the Central Government which is already struggling with the rupee will consider your case with compassion and let you keep all the cash. Even a few years ago, defaulters of any kind of tax payment were met with severe punishments including heavy fines leading to imprisonment. Such drastic measures as expected had played its share of influence into bullying the evaders to tighten their means and methods of hiding.  

However, with the introduction of VCES, Service tax compliance has become very easy even for the deliberate evaders. The main reason because of which the non compliant parties come out in the open is that, this scheme does not include any severe punishment for the former. The parties are respectfully allowed to pay up within a set period of time through various modes of payment. Depending upon the amount due, the parties can pay their dues in easy installments. Ignoring the call of the authorities to open up to the scheme can become a punishable offence.