All eyes are on the GST Council’s meeting in which a new proposal is expected to be heard by the Finance Ministry about levying a 28 per cent GST or Goods and Service Tax on online gambling or betting, casinos, and horse racing.
47th Meet of GST Council
The 47th meeting of the GST council is expected to be held between 28-29 June which will be headed by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitaraman and will be attended by the representatives of states and Union Territories. The meeting is being conducted after a gap of six months.
Headed by Meghalaya Chief Minister Conrad Sangma, the group of Finance Ministers imposed that the gambling income generated by online bets, horse racing, casinos, etc, should be taxed on total revenue including the paid entry fees for the competing in the game.
Conditions For Separate Games
The Group of Ministers recommended that GST should be imposed on total value including all the corpus placed on the bet to totalisators and bookmakers for the horse racing.
Meanwhile, for the Casinos, the Group of Ministers suggests that the GST should be implied considering the total number of chips or coins bought by the player. And no further value will be taxed on bets which were placed by using these chips or coins. Plus, the entry fees into the casinos which will also include the food and beverage costs should be taxed under the 28 per cent tax slab, they suggested. As for the current scenario, the income earned by luck (gambling) including online betting, horse racing, and casinos is taxed under the 18 per cent slab.
Associates Senior Partner Rajat Mohan said, “Taxing online gaming, horse racing, and casinos at gross revenue instead of net value addition would be a departure from the global tax ethics”.
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He suggests that this proposal may hype up the exchequer for a short period but will result in increasing the black money generation in this unorganised sector in the long-term scenario.
