The new list includes professionals like chartered accountants, cost accountants, company secretaries, market research agencies, real estate agents and architects who are in the organised sector and are easily identifiable for bringing them under the tax net, they added.

There are still certain sectors, like interior decorators, which are still partially unorganised and it will be difficult for the department to ascertain their tax liability, sources said.

According to western regional member, Institute of Chartered Accountants of India (ICAI), Uttam Aggrawal, removal of transporters and catering & pandal contractors from the purview of service tax will have little impact on tax collections. Since they were brought under thepurview of service tax, the department has not collected any tax mainly due to the nation-wide resentment from these two sectors.

"Life will be all the more difficult for chartered accountants as payments made to us even now generally come after a delay of six months", he lamented. Tax experts feel that the government should have brought advocate also under the the service tax net.

Service tax collections in the country have registered an 18.5-per cent increase at Rs 1,204 crore till February 1998 as against Rs 1,015 crore during the previous year ended March 1997. It will, however, fall short of the targeted Rs 2,000 crore for 1997-98. The rise in collections has been attributed to the extension of service tax to 12 new areas in 1997-98.

Service tax was first levied, in 1994-95, on only three sectors -- telephone, insurance and stock brokers -- but was subsequently widened to cover services including manpower recruitment agencies, air travel agents, goods transport operators and steameragents.

According to figures available from the Central Board of Excise and Customs (CBEC), service tax collections between 1994-95 and 1997-98 (till February) increased by a whopping 87 cent from Rs 420 crore to Rs 1,204 crore.