Whether abacus services can be classified under recreation services and availed the exemption specified in the notification. This issue is solved in following advance ruling.

1. Facts of the Case:

It is submitted that with products like UCMAS, UC-Dino Art, and UC-MLS from UCMAS Education Group Malaysia, the applicant has ensured that with the medium of using tools like ABACUS, arts and various memory enhancing techniques, a child’s mental abilities & faculties like concentration power, memory, alertness, imagination skills and focus can be enhanced.

The applicant has submitted that UCMAS (Universal Concept Mental Arithmetic System) is a product of UC International Corp is a child development program based on Visual Arithmetic and Abacus that boosts brainpower in children aged 4-13 years. Along with strengthening math skills, the UCMAS approach promotes whole brain development and establishes foundational building blocks like memory, concentration, creativity and problem solving– core skills that inspire greater confidence and success in all subject areas and in life.

2. Held:

Following points are considered by the Authority submitted by the applicant:

1. It is submitted that UCMAS is much more than developing number skills. Using Math as a medium and Abacus as a tool, this program helps developing basic cognitive skills and cognitive executive functions of a child. Cognitive skills are the core skills that the brain uses to think, read, learn, remember, reason, and pay attention. Working together, they take incoming information and move it into the bank of knowledge a child uses every day at school, and in life.

2. It is also submitted that UCMAS Training or Coaching Services provided by the applicant falls under the category of a Recreational Training Service/Activity. The word “recreational activity? has not been defined in the GST Act specifically.

3. It is submitted that recreation should not be confined to playing games or watching television. There are a variety of activities which could be called as recreational. Even though, a vast majority of students do not find mathematics or arithmetic very interesting, by employing special methods, the subject which some consider as drudgery can be made interesting and thereby recreational. Under UCMAS, the applicant applies various methods to make learning of arithmetical skills enjoyable.

3. It is further submitted that Abacus taught under UCMAS which is a recreational activity relates to an art. ?„Art? has again not been defined in the GST Act. ABACUS under CMAS is not merely a method to improve the speed and accuracy of calculations but it is also an activity wherein the children undergoing training are developed with the other aspects of the mind.

Further, the training imparted by the applicant to create interest in students for more advance form of mathematics so as to enhance their thinking capacity and mental development or employing methods of play involving musical, visual and specialized effects does not make the activities of the applicant as the training or coaching in recreational activities.