As was widely expected, the government has sought to both widen and deepen its service tax net in the union budget for 2012-13 presented to Parliament today by finance minister Pranab Mukherjee.

In its key proposal on indirect taxes, Mukherjee said the service tax rate would be raised to 12 per cent from the 10 per cent; and more importantly he said all services except the 17 in the 'negative list' would be taxed from April, when the new fiscal begins.

The negative list will now include copyright in relation to cinematography in the film industry.

Mukherjee said that to maintain a healthy fiscal situation, the government has raised the service tax with consequent changes in rates for services that have individual tax rates.

This is expected to yield an additional revenue of Rs18,600 crore.

The share of services in the gross domestic production (GDP) has increased to 59 per cent, the minister added.