A company is availing services of security guards from the security agencies which is furnishing us bills towards security guards services provided to us.
The bill furnished to us is inclusive of service tax @ 12.36%.
Please tell us whether we as a company are liable to pay service tax if we are making payment to agency after deducting tds on such bills.
Please advise.
Please also advise whether it matters whether the security agency is owned by an individual or company.
Service tax reverse charge applies where security suppliers are non corporate; corporate suppliers may invoice full service tax. When procuring security guard services, a corporate supplier may charge full service tax on its invoice; where the supplier is non corporate a partial reverse charge mechanism applies, shifting part of the service tax liability to the recipient. The correspondence questions the relevance of deducting tax at source to service tax liability and notes no clear provision linking TDS to service tax charging. (AI Summary)