New Delhi: The ministry of electronics and IT, the nodal ministry regulating online gaming, will ask the GST Council to reconsider its decision of levying 28% tax on online gaming after the regulatory framework around the online gaming rules develops, minister of state Rajeev Chandrasekhar said Monday at an event.
Chandrasekhar said that the GST Gathering, which was a government body had been taking care of on the problem for the beyond three years while the administrative structure for web based gaming just started in January 2023
Read: 28% GST on Online Gaming: New Government Rule (July 2023)
“The GST Council is not the Government of India. The council is represented by all state governments. It is a federal organization. State governments and finance ministers have come together and created a GST framework. That is a consequence of three years of their work. While we may quibble with the findings, we have to recognize the process of creating a framework for online gaming, started in January 2023,” he said.
“We are only in the nascent stages of creating a sustainable, permissible online gaming framework. So we will do that and go back to the GST Council and maybe request their consideration on the new regulatory framework,” he said.
The GST Council on July 11 said that the government will impose a goods and service tax of 28% on the turnover of online gaming companies, horse racing and casinos.
Chandrasekhar added that the GST Council, which was a federal body had been working on the issue for the past three years while the regulatory framework for online gaming only began in January 2023.
“We believe that, and Prime Minister’s very clear: In the digital space, do everything from the perspective of the next decade. So the laws, rules, all go through detailed, deep consultation with the stakeholders and then we take people on board. The online gaming rules went through 3.5 months of consultation and what the government started with and what we ended with were totally different. So, its better to do it right than to do it fast,” he added.