Goods and Service Tax, a new unified tax system with one Nation, one Tax system slogan, that the Indian Government as implemented after eight years of it being in planning stage. According to the plan, many changes in pricing system have come into existence from fortnight and the people trying to come into grips with the situation.
But the Film business seems to be the one that will get maximum effected by this system as the state tax system in the name of Municipal tax is still in place and GST becomes an addition to the existing tax system. Many makers from Industry feel that GST will kill the business of Cinema as many won’t show interest in small films and save up for those big films from Hindi, English or Telugu and ignore the medium budget movies until the pirated CDs are arrived.
Damodar Prasad the producer and secretary of Film Chamber said, “ We were confused till the last hour on Friday Night to understand the complexity of the tax system and decide on the ticket rates. We are still not in the know completely and system needs to have lot of transparency. The system seems to benefit the country in long run but we do need to understand the immediate difficulties that it will cost us, the Film Industry as well. The 18% GST is on the tickets upto Rs. 100 and 28% tax on tickets higher than Rs. 100. Such complexities will kill the small and medium cinema that thrive on Multiplex business.”
Several Multiplex owners have decided that they won’t increase the ticket rates for the time being and they are planning to go with the same rates until the Government and distributors come to an understand on how the system needs to work so that all parties can benefit. Everyone is saying that GST in the immediate future is going to hit the film business more than expected and Government should consider how to not take people for a ride.
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