The Supreme Court which is supposed to continue hearing the high profile Gameskraft GST matter today, July 18 informed senior counsel that the matter will be taken up on Monday, July 21. The matter is listed before a division bench comprising Justices J.B. Pardiwala and R. Mahadevan. He was appearing for a matter involving opinion trading platform Probo when the bench informed of no hearing today in the tax matter.
The hearing, which has now spanned 15 days, is centered around the constitutional validity of the retrospective ₹1.53 lakh crore GST demands issued to online gaming companies and casino operators. These demands stem from the government’s interpretation that online gaming, including games of skill, should be taxed at 28% on the full face value or Gross Bet Value (GBV), rather than on the operator’s earnings or Gross Gaming Revenue (GGR).
On the previous hearing day (July 17), another senior advocate, representing gaming platform Winzo, argued that games of skill cannot be equated with gambling or betting, and therefore should not be subjected to the same tax treatment. He highlighted that prior to the July 2023 GST amendments, online skill gaming was taxed under the OIDAR (Online Information and Database Access or Retrieval) services regime, and retrospective application of the new provisions was legally untenable.
Following Singh, another senior advocate, began submissions on behalf of Delta Corp, a listed casino operator. He contended that the use of GBV as the tax base results in a distorted and arbitrary levy, since it taxes money never earned by the casino. He argued that the globally recognized standard of taxing GGR more accurately captures real revenue and that taxing GBV violates the principle of equality under Article 14 of the Constitution.
The bench is expected to resume hearing of senior counsel’s arguments on Monday.
Source from: https://g2g.news/gst-on-online-gaming/sc-defers-gameskraft-gst-matter-hearing-to-july-21-monday/
