The revenue department has taken a decision that service tax assesses who pay Rs 50 lakh (Rs 5 million) or more will have to pay online from September.

As per the present norms, corporates have to pay service tax on a monthly basis while non-corporates have to pay the tax quarterly.

Officials said though the revenue department had provided the facility to pay the tax online last year, there were very few takers.

"The e-payment of the tax will help us build a database and check on the number of the large tax-payers who are filing the tax. While the income tax department is able to verify the number of stop-filers, there is no database to verify the same in case of service tax," they said.

Service tax expert J K Mittal said the move would facilitate early disbursement of credit to the tax payers directly into their bank accounts and chances of errors would be greatly reduced.

Under the new system, a challan would be generated online in which each tax-payer would have to fill his registeration or code number.