the wordings in section 10aa which deals with activities in sezs are similar to that of section 10a said a tax professional the cbdt was likely to discuss past cases nature of contracts and the stand taken by the department on these issues said a source since benefits under section 10a have been phased out with the end of the 10year tax holiday some of the software companies are carrying out additional activities in sezs software companies located in sezs can claim tax exemption under section 10aa these companies are cautious not to relocate their stp units to sezs fearing it may attract the taxmans attention if there is a sudden scaling down of the stp unit to house the software development business in sezs while they are careful not to report a lower turnover in stps new contracts are being taken up at sezs said an industry source in 2009 when it and bpo firms felt the brunt of the recession some firms laid off people while others put them on a virtual bench with reduced salaries the top it firms each employ staff ranging from 80000 to over 2 lakh these firms may struggle to grow 20 per cent without support from growth in it budgets said a kotak report released last week according to forrester research margins of top indian it exporters could slip to about 15 per cent from the high 20s because of new technologies such as cloud computing that drive prices lower