Asia Bizz: On April 4, 2012, a senior ministry official in India stated that Vijay Mallya’s Kingfisher Airlines has to pay Rs. 60 crores as tax. SK Goel, the chairman of Central Board of Excise and Customs said that the airline has been asked to pay the amount and that no concession will be provided to the carrier.
Goel told reporters that there was no question of leeway to Kingfisher on the payment of service tax. In the past four months, the service tax department has frozen 40 bank accounts belonging to the airlines when it failed to meet the deadline on February 29, 2012 for clearing its dues of Rs. 40 crore to the department.
Even the airline staff threatened to go on strike if their salaries and other dues were not paid in time. But on April 2, 2012, Mallya wrote a letter to the staff stating that their dues and salaries would be paid once their bank accounts have been un-frozen following the payments of Rs. 44 crores to the income tax department.
The airline has to pay Rs. 20 crores to the service crore department. In the letter to the staff, the airline chief said that the junior staff will be paid their dues before April 4, 2012.
