In a bid to collect more revenues, the government had announced to hike taxes on railways fares comprising freight charges and passengers fare of some selected classes, which will come in to effect from 1st October, 2012, announced Railways.
Indian Railways in its release said, "Fares of AC first class, executive class, AC-two tier, AC-three tier, AC chair car, AC economy class and first class would go up by 3.708 per cent from Oct 1."
'The tax will apply to tickets issued in advance. Travelling ticket checkers will recover the service tax from passengers on the train or by the booking office before the train starts off,' it added.
"In the case of cancellation of tickets, the service tax amount will not be refunded by the railways. On concessional tickets, service charges of 30 percent will be charged on the fare being paid by the passenger,"
With regard to freight charges, a 3.7 percent service tax has been charged by the ministry.
However, certain commodities have been exempted from payment of service tax.
"The amount of Service Tax collected from passengers will be deposited with the Ministry of Finance as per procedure. Finance Departments of Zonal Railways have been instructed for proper accountal and remittance of Service Tax amount to the Government," the notification said.
This hike in railways fare will come, six months after the former Railways Minister Dinesh Trivedi's announcement in tabling Railway Budget 2012. Dinesh Trivedi was then in Trinamool Congress and its Chief Mamata Banerjee had forced him to quit from the post or roll back the charges.
Dinesh advocated to hike the charges. He later resigned from the post and another party leader Mukul Roy were made new Railway Minister, who has now resigned after TMC pulled back support from the UPA government.
--With IANS Inputs--
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