A film delegation led by Film and TV Producers Guild President Mukesh Bhatt will be meeting the service tax commissioner on Tuesday.
Bhatt said, "I am going to ask the department to stop witch hunting filmmakers are not paying tax not because they don't want to but the process is so complicated that really need to educated on it. The department needs to engage instead of target us. There are so many other industries defaulting on paying service tax why only film industry names are being flashed in the media.''
Ramgopal Varma office was raided on Wednesday feels that the film industry is targeted. He told TOI, "Like several other film makers we were also completely unaware of our service tax exposure over which there was lot of ambiguity due to different interpretations. However, all us film makers are looking at taking the benefit of the scheme that the government has offered but even before we can start the due process the dept is targeting the Film Industry and is also discussing our privileged details with Press in the public domain which is very unfortunate.''
Sources in the industry say there service tax officials are making surprise visits to film producers offices almost every day. Bhatt said, "I am not saying that don't punish those who are crooked but there is genunine problem and producers are ignorant and I don't penalize them for that. Government comes down us heavily when we default but when it comes to getting our refunds we have to bribe officials to get our refund cheques.''
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