Education, healthcare and pilgrimages will continue to be out of service tax net even under the GST regime as the Centre is against giving any shock in the first year of the rollout by bringing in new services. Besides making a strong case to the GST Council for not touching services that are out of tax net currently, the Centre will also pitch for keeping concessional rate for services like transport at the current level, Revenue Secretary Hasmukh Adhia told PTI in an interview.

The GST Council, headed by Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley and comprising representatives of all states, is scheduled to meet in Srinagar on May 18-19 to decide on rates various good and services will be charged in the new indirect tax regime that is being targeted for rollout from July 1.

The Revenue Secretary said the endeavour would be to maintain the current tax incidence on a commodity or service at the same level in the new Goods and Services Tax (GST) regime.