Multiplexes and halls will now have to provide the cine-goers with an electronic invoice as the government issued a new guideline to curb GST evasion in the entertainment sector. The GST council issued new guidelines according to which the registered multiplexes will have to comply with the rules and provide E-bills instead of coloured bills. The electronic tickets will now be considered as a tax invoice.
Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman led council, announced that in order to reduce tax evasion, e-ticketing for multiplexes will be mandatory now. Also, the coloured tickets that a few cinema halls still use will be discontinued.
The official statement of the Ministry of Finance quoted “with the advancement in technology the taxation process should be made much convenient for all, and with E-invoicing the taxpayers will get help in backward integration and automation of tax-relevant processes. In addition to this, the statement further mentioned that this advancement will also help authorities in combating tax evasion.
The ministry has implemented this move for B2B process and speaking about it, the council’s statement also said that the phase-1 for e-invoicing rules is voluntary and the roll-out might be from January 2020.
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Chandrajit Banerjee, the Director-General of CII said that ” the E-billing shall greatly add-up in making the logistics a much easier section and reduce transaction cost.” He added that this move will boost the formal economy and will increase efficiency in tax payment.
PVR, the largest player with most Multiplexes has already implemented the e-ticketing, and the move won’t affect such big players in the screening industry, but it is being considered symbolic as it might be implemented to the single screen theatres in the coming months as well. Also, with this decision, the multiplexes will serve as the test center for Business to Consumer (B2C) electronic invoicing, which until now was only required for Business to Business (B2B) transaction.
This is a welcome move as now the consumers will get a direct invoice and will know the exact details of the expense on their invoice. Earlier the multiplexes and cinema halls use to sell tickets in a whimsical manner, providing the consumers with no added information about the transaction.