IIM-Ahmedabad first approached the HRD Ministry seeking its intervention after an order passed by revenue authorities demanded that the institute pay Rs 52 crore as service tax. (Express photo: Javed Raja/ File)IN WHAT could end the tax woes of IIMs, the Department of Revenue, in a meeting with the HRD Ministry Tuesday, has agreed to place a proposal to exempt all IIM programmes from service tax before the GST Council.
Currently, all core educational services are not subject to GST under Entry 66 of a notification dated June 28, 2017. Entry 67 categorically exempts the two-year full-time postgraduate programme, fellow programme in management and the five-year integrated programme in management, offered by all the IIMs, from being treated as chargeable to service tax.
With the IIMs now backed by an Act of Parliament, all institute directors, in a meeting held last week on the sidelines of the Pan IIM World Management Conference, had collectively petitioned the HRD Minisry to intervene on their behalf and urge Finance Ministry to extend GST exemption to all their programmes, including the one-year postgraduate programme in management for executives.
The matter was taken up in a meeting held between higher education secretary R. Subrahmanyam and revenue secretary Ajay Bhushan Tuesday in which the latter is learnt to have agreed to place IIM request before the GST Council.
“It has been proposed that Entry 67, which exempts only three types of programmes, should be deleted and the IIMs, by virtue of being backed by an Act, should be covered under Entry 66, which applies to all educational institutions. However, the final decision is of the (GST) Council,” said a source on the condition of anonymity.
As first reported by The Indian Express on July 9, IIM-Ahmedabad first approached the HRD Ministry seeking its intervention after an order passed by revenue authorities demanded that the institute pay Rs 52 crore as service tax. While the ministry wrote to the revenue department on IIM-A’s case, other IIMs flagged tax demands by authorities for courses other than those exempt under Entry 67, even after the passage of the IIM Act. This was raised collectively by all institute directors in a meet with Subrahmanyam last week, in which the latter agreed to take it up with the department of revenue.
