GST Council keeps 28% levy on online gaming, casinos, horse racing; Centre hopes to start implementation from October

by Shams Khan

Recently finance minister, Nirmala Sitharaman, who chaired the Council’s meeting, said the Centre would now strive to amend the Goods and Services Tax (GST) law in parliament current session  itself to enable the i

mplementation of the levy, despite dissent from Sikkim and Goa over the modalities of the tax for casino users.

Goa and Sikkim kept appealing that they were small States and needed consideration, the Council agreed to come back after six months after implementation to review the way in which this is getting implemented,

“Taxing GST on deposits rather than the technology platform commission charged by the companies will make the unit economics unviable, wiping out 80 percent of the industry, with fatality concentrated in MSMEs and startups that house new age business models. This increase of 400 percent will solely encourage the rise of monopolistic play. Reasonable taxation can protect our over 500 million internet consumers from illegal offshore products,”said Saumya Singh Rathore, co-founder, WinZO, an online gaming platform.