DTH operators ask govt to rationalise taxes
By Sathish on Sep 13, 2009 with Comments 0
NEW DELHI: Leading DTH players such as Dish TV and TataSky have urged the government to rationalise the multiple taxes on the industry, saying these are affecting the growth of the nascent sector.
“Taxes like service tax, annual license fee and entertainment tax alone take the incidence on services alone to about 50.3 per cent of the total cost. This is bad for the industry, which is still in its nascent stage,” TataSky Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer Mr Vikram Kaushik said.
With bottomlines under pressure, operators are charging the consumers extra. Dish TV has hiked the price of set top boxes and its recharge packs in Uttar Pradesh, where entertainment tax to the tune of 30 per cent has been levied by the state government.
“Till now, we were absorbing the additional entertainment tax burden but we have now decided to pass it on to all our new and old customers in the state of UP. At the end of the day, it is the customer who gets impacted,” Dish TV Chief Operating Officer Mr Salil Kapoor said. – PTI
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