November 7: The business community is sharply divided on levy of five per cent service tax notified by the government on Thursday. While the Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry (Assocham) criticised the levy of tax, the All India Motor Transport Congress expressed relief at the modalities of collection of the tax. The service tax would be levied on the consignor and not the transporter. Aimtc secretary general Chitranjan Dass said that some business chambers want the service tax to be collected by the transport operators who had already gone on strike on this issue. The transport operators had asked the government not to make them a medium of collection of the new levy. ''we told the government that you had made us a medium for collection of octroi and the results were disastrous so do not put another burden on us''. Dass said if levy of service tax would lead to ''corruption and harassment'' for the members of the leading chambers, would it not not mean the same thing for the transport operators.

In regard to a contention that the tax would hit the bottomlines of the corporates, Dass asked why the Opposition did not come when it was announced in the budget. On the other hand, president of the Federation of Small Industries of India V P Chopra questioned ``how either industry or trade or others could be made responsible for collection of service tax other than the service-provider, that is the transport operator'' president of the Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry L Lakshman said to avoid cascading impact, the service tax should be modvated and should become part of the value-added tax. President of the forum of Delhi Trade Associations Praveen Khandelwal warned that the trading community would not not take levy of service tax kindly and oppose the same ``tooth and nail''.

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