The Hindu : Andhra Pradesh / Hyderabad News : Applications sold to students taxed!

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Saturday, Jun 27, 2009
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Andhra Pradesh

Andhra Pradesh - Hyderabad

Applications sold to students taxed!

OU College for Women asked to pay sales tax

Commercial Taxes Department serves notice on the college to pay Rs. 1,15,400 as sales tax
Total worth of forms is put at Rs. 28,87,240 for academic years 2005 to 2009

HYDERABAD: Commercial Taxes Department seems to be searching for new avenues to generate resources.

A letter sent to the Osmania University College for Women, Koti to shell out money on the application forms sold to the students is perhaps an indication of it.

Notice served

The department has recently served a notice on the college to pay Rs. 1,15,400 as sales tax for the application forms sold for the academic years 2005 to 2009. The total worth of the forms is put at Rs. 28, 87,240.

The college, which is an autonomous institution, was surprised to receive the letter since such demand from the Commercial Taxes Department was never made earlier. “We don’t even know how that figure was arrived at,” explained a senior teacher.

Officials say that government institutions, more so, educational institutions have never been bothered with such issues.

Official clarifies

The APSCHE Secretary, M.D. Christopher clarified that they never received such notices for any entrance examinations.

Similarly, universities that conduct admissions for their PG and UG programmes have never been asked to pay sales tax though they sell applications in large numbers.

Interestingly, even private educational institutions that make huge money from the sale of prospectus-cum-application forms for their courses have admitted that they never paid sales tax on application forms.

“In fact, we are not even aware of such practice,” explained the correspondent of a private college.

‘Ridiculous’

Meanwhile, the college has written to the department that they don’t sell application forms but they only charge registration fee unlike private colleges.

College teachers say targeting students for generating money is ridiculous while the government disburses crores as scholarships to students. They remind that sales tax is generally passed on to the end user and if such tax is to be paid it would be passed on to the students only.

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