Court stays proposed service tax on individual lawyers

The division bench of Chief Justice Dipak Misra and Justice Sanjiv Khanna heard the petition of the Delhi High Court Bar Association and asked the central government to file its response within two weeks.

The notification was meant to also bring under the service tax net, individual lawyers rendering their services to firms and companies. Legal firms, as opposed to individual lawyers, are already under the service tax net since last year.

Individual lawyers extending services to individuals remain outside the ambit.
Various bar associations had gone on strike March 24 to protest the move proposed in the federal budget for 2011-12 presented by Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee. He had sought to exempt individual lawyers rendering their services to individuals.

A similar move by his predecessor P. Chidambaram in 2007 was withdrawn due to protests.