Hyderabad,Feb'06: The budget presented by Union Minister P. Chidambaram was just an old wine in a new bottle. It was just jugglery of robbing Peter to pay Paul. A tax trick. It is nothing less than ‘giving with one hand’ and ‘taking with two hands’. It has disappointed city PR Agencies as they are brought under tax net for the first time along with 15 new services. Reacting sharply, D.Ramchandram of Solus Media, one of the very few city headquartered Public Relations agencies said, bringing PR service into tax net is just nipping the bud in the beginning. Public Relations in the country is a sun rise industry. It is not yet arrived fully. There are only handful of players not more than 100 all over the country. With their branch offices put together, there are not more than 250 PR outfits all over India, according to the listings on Agencyfaqs.com, a industry resource website. The roughly estimated size of the Indian PR industry is close to Rs 1 billion. The industry is yet to get its due recognition in India and it is to be kept in mind that because of that, there may be many PR agencies or consultancies who may not have disclosed their revenue figures rightly. The Indian PR industry is roughly about 200 to 300 agency strong with a total manpower of around 4,000 to 5,000 professionals. Bringing this baby service sector under tax net acts as a deterrent for the growth of the new industry.

The new budget presented in the parliament is anti technology and anti sun rise industries. It is a short sighted budget and lacks vision which is evident from the fact of abolishing one-by-six scheme for I-T returns filing. Bringing recovery agents on a level along with 15 new services is giving them a legal status, which is very unfortunate. Many courts in the country ruled out using recovery agents. In some cases using pressure to collect money by these recovery agents was even observed as illegal. By bringing them in tax net it is nothing but glorifying their services. Further taxing ATM users is ridiculous and unthinkable. Once the Automatic Teller Machines are now converted into Automatic Tax Machines by the Union Finance Minister.