Pay more for leisure and entertainment from Nov 15

Your weekends are set to pinch your pockets more as Swachh Bharat Cess is set to increase the tax on services you avail, many of them in the ambit of leisure and entertainment

Zee Media Bureau

New Delhi: You will have to shell out a little extra on consumption of service like  telecom, restaurant, beauty parlour, hiring a cab, security service etc.

The government has decided to levy the Swachh Bharat Cess of 0.5% percent on all services that are at present taxed. The effective service tax will go up from 14% to 14.5% from November 15.

This will translate into a tax of 50 paisa on every one hundred rupees worth of taxable services.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi had on August 15, 2014 given a call to achieve the objective of clean India by the year 2019, the 150th year of the birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi, through the Swachh Bharat Mission.

The Budget proposed 100 percent tax deduction for the contributions, other than by way of CSR spending, to the Swachh Bharat Kosh.

While announcing the Union Budget 2015, the finance ministry had said that the contribution to Swachh Bharat Kosh as part of the CSR activities by corporates will not be entitled for tax exemptions.

Swachh Bharat and Clean Ganga are among the major initiatives of the Narendra Modi government, which has embarked on a major drive to ensure cleanliness across the country.