The title of the article has taken its genesis from the newly introduced Place of Provision of Service Rules, 2012 (for brevity ‘POP Rules’). As every person reading this article know that there is a paradigm shift in the taxation of the services with effective from 01.07.2012, popularly known as ‘Negative List’ regime. In addition to such shift in the taxation base, there were also new set of rules called POP Rules for determining the taxability of a transaction, generally a cross-border one.
Before understanding the title of the article in light of POP Rules, let us have a look at the new charging section that is Section 66B which states that there shall be levied service tax on the services provided or agreed to be provided in the taxable territory. Hence, the question to be answered is simple and one liner ‘Whether the services provided or agreed to be provided are in the taxable territory?’ If yes, then the charging section holds good and if not there is no levy.
However, the answer for the above question is not a one liner. One has to look carefully into the POP Rules. The main aim of the POP Rules are to guide the place of consumption of the service and let us have peek into the POP Rules to understand the significance of the title of this article.