Indore: Commercial tax department is awaiting Supreme Court verdict on the petitions moved by Direct to Home (DTH) service providers and cable operators and expecting a favourable verdict so that it could recover a big amount owed by the companies to it as tax.
The service providers including Reliance, Tata Sky and others started paying tax from last year following a Supreme Court order.
But the department argues that since the companies had started operation since 2003, they should also pay tax for the seven years till 2010. On this issue, the service providers moved the Supreme Court.
“These companies became operational in 2003 but were not paying tax on the grounds that there was no provision for imposing tax on the Direct to Home service providers in the state”, assistant commissioner excise, Jabalpur, Vinod Raghuvanshi told DNA.
Following this, the commercial tax department moved to the high court against the companies in 2009. The court decided the case in favour of the department in September 2010.
Thereafter the companies moved to the Supreme Court where the final verdict is yet to come.
However, the apex court decided that the companies should keep paying tax till the final decision is taken. So, the companies started paying tax but they have not provided any record of the earlier turnover i.e., the turnover before the decision of the court.
“On an average the companies currently pay around `1.5 crore per month for Indore only. At this rate the companies should pay more than 100 crore for the period of 2003 to 2010 if the decision comes in our favour”, said a source in the commercial tax department.
Charge of collecting tax from these companies was handed over to the commercial tax department from April 1, 2011.
Cable operators: Cable operators have moved court and the commercial tax department has not been able to collect any revenue from them, said additional commissioner excise, GS Baghel.
“We are getting the entertainment tax which is 20% over the turnover from the DTH service providers but the cable operators are not paying any revenue because they have moved court”, Baghel said.
Source: DailyBhaskar.com