The Union finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Tuesday after the conclusion of the council’s 50th meet, announced that the Goods and Services Tax Council has decided to levy 28% GST on online gaming, horse racing, and casinos at full value.
Now, after the implementation of the new GST rates ₹28 will be charged per ₹100 spent on an online game, explained Shivani Jha, Tech Policy Lawyer and Director, EPWA (E-Gamers and Players Welfare Association). She said, “This will not only discourage players from playing, the professionals for whom it’s a livelihood will be burdened by taxation. It may also force them to play on offshore platforms, and the whole vision of creating a digital progressing gaming ecosystem seems blurry at this point.”
“It was a decision (28% GST on online gaming, casinos & horse racing) more from a moral point of view. Killing an industry (online gaming) is not on our agenda. The focus is to have a simplified system,” Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said in a press conference after the conclusion of the 50th meeting of the GST Council here. She said the definition of online gaming will be in sync with the definition in the legislation being proposed by the IT Ministry. “Here, the aim is taxation only,” she clarified.
Apart from this, the union minister has also recommended cutting down rates from 18% to 5% on 4 items – Uncooked, unfried & extruded snack palettes, fish soluble paste, LD slag to be at par with blast furnace slag and imitation zari thread.
A recommendation for the exemption of cancer-related drugs, medicines for rare diseases, and food products for special medical purposes from GST tax has been proposed.
In addition to this, GST Council recommends notification of the GST Appellate Tribunal by the Centre with effect from August 1, 2023. Several measures for streamlining compliances in GST have also been proposed by GST Council.
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