Get ready to pay 15% tax from next month on all downloads from foreign websites

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http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/wealth/tax/...

The next time you download music or an ebook 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.
Domestic suppliers, say of movies which can be downloaded by customers in India, already incur this service tax. But if the supplier is overseas, the tax doesn’t apply if the recipient is an individual, government, local body or government agency based in India. Overseas suppliers incur the service tax only in respect of B2B transactions where the recipient is in India. Further, an
exemption is available in such B2B transactions if the supply is related to information databases (such as a subscription for international tax journals).
In a surprising move, the Central Board of Excise and Customs (CBEC) has—through four separate but interlinked notifications dated November 9—significantly amended the ‘Place of Provisions of Services Rules’ (PPSR) for ‘online information and database access or retrieval services’, thus impacting your bill.
The crux of the amendment is the change in the definition of ‘place of provision of service’. At present, if service providers are outside India, the place of provision of service is also outside India and no service tax is payable on such services supplied to individuals, government and government bodies in India (service tax applied only to B2B transactions as explained earlier).
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, ebooks 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 intermediary or authorised representative will need to register in India and pay the service tax,” says Sunil Gabhawalla, chartered accountant and indirect tax expert. He added, “Since the overseas service provider is likely to collect this tax from the end user who
downloads these services, it will increase the cost for the consumer.”

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Benevolent Benevolent
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this is applicable only if a fee/cost is charged for such download. otherwise, 15% of Zero is also Zero.

Deal Subedar Deal Subedar
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It might attract 15% tax on purchases made on Google Play and other similar services. But most download in India is done using pirated links hence not much to think upon.

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