KATHMANDU: Private school proprietors today said that they were not going to pay the one per cent Education Service Tax (EST) proposed by the government this fiscal while passing the budget. The deadline for the payment passed on December 10. They reasoned that the move was against the principle of ‘social justice’ and ‘human rights’. School proprietors argued that since private secondary schools were already paying 25 per cent and higher secondary schools 50 per cent to the government out of their profit, there was no point in making them pay a surcharge. “We are not going to pay the one per cent EST at any cost,” said Bhoj Bahadur Shah, president of Private and Boarding Schools’ Organisation Nepal (PABSON). He was speaking at an interaction organised here by the Education Journalists’ Network (EJON). “Imposing tax on education goes against social justice and violates human rights,” he said, adding, “No country in the world has such a practice.” He urged the government to scrap EST and wipe out the very word ‘tax’ from the root of the education sector. He also urged the government to establish ‘education development support fund’ where the private schools would voluntarily donate. Shah also urged the government to enlarge its profit margin from the education sector while effectively controlling the leakages of tax in other sectors. Citing that the decision was unfair, Subash Neupane, vice president of National Private and Boarding School’s Organisation of Nepal (N-PABSON) also spoke along Shah’s lines, urging the government to roll back its decision. Navaraj Bhandari, deputy director general, Inland Revenue Department, said since last year they have not been able to collect EST from the schools, except the first installment of Rs 70 million. However, he hoped that the service tax would be imposed on the schools later this year since it was backed by the political parties. Bhandari, meanwhile, said concerned stakeholders were already notified to form a probe committee in order to book those private schools guilty of flouting the law by not paying the service tax.