Union Finance Minister P Chidambaram has asked service tax defaulters to take advantage of the amnesty scheme-Voluntary Compliance Encouragement Scheme, VCES. He said, the government could not have come out with a better offer for them to come clean. Addressing industry chambers in Mumbai yesterday, Mr Chidambaram said, the revenue department has so far received 6,409 applications, of which 3,085 have been accepted.VCES had been introduced with effect from May 10, 2013 as a one-time amnesty scheme for paying service tax dues for the period October 1, 2007 to December 31, 2012 without interest and penalty.The Minister said the revenue department intends to collect over 1.80 lakh crore rupees under Service Tax in the current fiscal. He said that the service tax collection between April-September grew by 16 per cent to 59,000 crore rupees