Union Minister of State Rajeev Chandrasekhar on Wednesday said that he will ask the GST Council to reconsider the decision of imposing 28 per cent GST on online gaming. Speaking to the Indian Express’ Executive Director Anant Goenka at Express Adda on Wednesday July 19, the Minister of State for IT, Electronics, Skill development and Entrepreneurship said that ‘it is an evolving framework, which allows permissible online real money gaming.’
He also said that there’s a general belief among the states to ‘extrapolate online gaming, and online gambling as a surrogate of gambling’ and consider it as ‘social evil.’ He added that there’s an instinct to not allow the sector to grow. The statement comes after the GST Council on July 11 announced the 28 per cent tax on turnover of casinos, online gaming firms and horse racing.
On India’s presence on global internet stage, Chandrasekhar said that “we are the single largest presence on the global internet today.” he added that the world is “actually looking at India” regarding views on regulatory framework.
The regulatory framework for Indian online gaming sector is still in the evolving stage. The deliberations began this year only. Back in April, MeitY had issued a notice for all firms dealing in online gaming to come up with self-regulating mechanism. So far, these self-regulatory bodies have not been formed yet.