The government has prepared a concept note to provide clarity on which services would be taxed and the ones that would be excluded. The move is part of the preparation being made for implementing a comprehensive Goods and Service Tax regime, which will shift the entire indirect tax levy to 16%. 

While releasing the concept note, the finance ministry said this is a preliminary exercice. "(The) negative list is made keeping in view a variety of considerations, for example, administrative, contractual obligations, difficulties to tax certain activities for want of ascertainable taxable value of each transaction or a number of socio-economic considerations as well as in the case of Indian constitutional limits," the paper said. tnn 


Along with the negative list the government has also sought to define 'service' for the first time. So, anything that is not classified as goods, money or immovable property will be treated as a service. The idea is to tax everything that is not on the negative list.