Now, 15% service tax on music, e-books sold on foreign portals

[6pack]

Source: http://economictimes.indiatimes.com...d-on-foreign-portals/articleshow/55383855.cms

The next time you download music or an e-book from an overseas site, or decide to buy some storage on a cloud from an overseas service provider, beware. Beginning December 1, a service tax component of 15% will be added to your bill.
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From December 1, the place of provision of a service will be the location of the service recipient. "Hence, say, all downloads in India will be subject to service tax. The amendments impact overseas companies providing various services like advertisements, web subscriptions, cloud hosting, music, e-books and gaming, to name a few. These services provided to governments and individuals were earlier not subject to service tax. They now become taxable and the overseas service provider or any interm ..

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[rads]

But why would a foreign company collect tax from me and submit to indian govt ?

 

[letmein]

What happened to GST?

 

[kiranrss]

It will most probably be 15% plus GST

 

[PH0ENiX]

How will the companies even know i am indian??
and this makes stuff like netflix more expensive then u.s..

 

[Mr.J]

Geo-location is a thing, unless you use VPN. But as @rads said, why would someone do this in the first place?

 

[kiranrss]

But why would a foreign company collect tax from me and submit to indian govt ?

If they dont , they will get blocked. VPN and proxies may work but payment gateways may also get blocked

 

[drkrack]

Its sort of GST for downloadable and digital content in general. Taxing the spending is the motive here. The implementation would be much more complicated than expected but it was already on the radar during the MMS tenure itself.

 

[geekwithlens]

Indian government and their idiotic schemes as usual.

 

[PH0ENiX]

offtopic why dont i pay 40% tax on 1500 video games?it will bring the value to 3k same as u.s.no problems here
but now i do with this 15% have to pay 2usd extra tax on netflix.

 

[chiron]

If they dont , they will get blocked. VPN and proxies may work but payment gateways may also get blocked

How would the govt get to know of the transaction details on a foreign website over which they don't have any jurisdiction?

 

[6pack]

^ they will put the onus on the sites itself. They'll ask the sites to charge the tax upfront and then pass it on to the govt. Else get tax notice from IT dept for more than what was sold or get raids on their offices in India.

 

[hotshot05]

^ they will put the onus on the sites itself. They'll ask the sites to charge the tax upfront and then pass it on to the govt. Else get tax notice from IT dept for more than what was sold or get raids on their offices in India.

What if they don't have any office in India?
e.g Udemy, Udacity etc

 

[kiranrss]

How would the govt get to know of the transaction details on a foreign website over which they don't have any jurisdiction?

Cc or debit card transactions are categorized so All they have to do is check that

 

[rads]

Cc or debit card transactions are categorized so All they have to do is check that

Or could just add some more fee to the conversion charges. 3%~ + another whatever...