Ad and subtract

The hard-hitting print advertisement campaign by the Department of Customs and Excise encouraging businesses to pay service tax has upset an unlikely group: the Delhi Transporters' Association. The association has sent a letter with copies to media houses protesting against "the vilification" of their industry in the advertisement. It accused the department of "caricaturing the truck owners as a defaulting tribe" that willfully avoids registering for service tax. The association has also taken exception to the fact that the advertisement exhorts this category of transporters to either register and pay or remain defaulters who are already under the department's scanner. The association wants the department to immediately withdraw the advertisement and offer an apology, through all the publications in which the advertisement appeared, to the transport industry and specially to transporters not liable to pay

any service tax or not liable to register.