Hiten & Smriti paying Service tax

Brand ambassadors ready to pay Service Tax

Televisionpoint.com Correspondent
The Maharashtra State Service tax department decision to get tough with individual brand ambassadors, has started producing Flowers. The ambassadors, most of whom are film actors, cricketers, have till July 5 to pay their taxes to the service tax commissionerate for contracts signed by them during this quarter.

Finance minister P Chidambaram had widened the service tax net to include individual service providers in the last Finance Bill for '06-07. The provisions relating to service tax came into effect from April 18, '06. The commissionerate hopes to rake in a substantial tax contribution from them before the quarterly deadline of July 5, since many new advertising contracts have been signed during the current quarter.

The cumulative service tax paid by them for the last financial year ('05-06) was Rs Rs 4 Crores is way below the '04-05 collection of Rs 6 Crores Amitabh Bachchan with Rs 2.5 Crores and Shah Rukh Khan with Rs 1 Crores were the major contributors. About three dozen brand ambassadors have now registered with the commissionerate in Mumbai. The recently registered celebrities include Karishma Kapoor, Sachin Tendulkar, Rani Mukherjee, Kajol and Abhishek Bachchan.

Televisionpoint.com, has earlier informed that among the major brand ambassadors in Mumbai who are required to register themselves with the department and pay service tax include actors Aamir Khan, Abhishek Bachchan, Rani Mukherjee, Akshay Kumar, Priyanka Chopra, Boman Irani, Naseeruddin Shah. The TV artistes list includes Smriti Irani, Shweta Tiwari, Gurdeep Kohli, Gauri Pradhan, Hiten Tejwani, Saakshi Tanwar. From cricket field its Ajit Agarkar and Mahendra Singh Dhoni. Actor Kareena Kapoor was the first to register herself with the department but pending controversy she did not pay the tax.