Does a delay in filing service tax return attract a penalty?

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We are a trading company engaged in the import and resale of tyres. We avail the services of a goods transporter for transportation of imported tyres to our warehouses and to distributors. We pay service tax on freight as a recipient of goods transport services. We have not filed our service tax return for the half-year ending September 30, 2007 due to internal delays. We have now finalised our return and in this connection would like to know whether there is an interest or any penal charges for filing a delayed return?

The service tax law recently introduced a provision whereby a late payment fee has been prescribed for delayed filing of returns. The fee for delayed filing of a return up to 30 days from the prescribed date of filing return—for the half year ending September 30, the return is to be filed by October 25—is Rs 1,000 and beyond such period is Rs 100 per day subject to a maximum levy of Rs 2,000. The delay in filing the half-yearly returns in your case is beyond 60 days. Hence, you would be liable to pay the maximum penalty of Rs 2,000.

We are proposing to open a travel agency and shall provide services of booking of air and rail travel tickets. We also plan to offer leisure tours for clients within and outside India. It appears to us that we should get ourselves registered under ‘Air Travel Agent’, ‘Rail Travel Agent’ and ‘Tour Operator’ service categories with the service tax authorities. We wish to know whether we have to make a separate application for registration for each service category or make a single application for all the services.

Rule 4(4) of the Service Tax Rules provides that an assessee providing more than one taxable service can make a single application mentioning all the taxable services to be provided by him. In the present case, you can make a single application in Form ST-1 to the concerned service tax office and you would be allotted a single registration in ST-2 with respect to all the services that you provide. You would accordingly need to file a single return covering all your taxable services. Also, all invoices raised by you would have a common service-tax registration number and there would not be a different number issued for various taxable services.