Govt seeks further week in SC as ₹2.5 lakh crore GST gaming verdict looms

The Government of India has sought extra time from the Supreme Court earlier than the pronouncement of judgment within the high-stakes Goods and Services Tax (GST) case involving on-line gaming. On Monday, authorities counsel Chandrashekara Bharathi requested the apex court docket to grant yet one more week to file supplementary submissions, after beforehand in search of two weeks.

The matter pertains to the applicability of GST on on-line video games — a dispute pegged at almost ₹2.5 lakh crore, making it one of many largest tax instances in India’s authorized historical past.

On August 12, a division bench of Justices J.B. Pardiwala and R. Mahadevan had reserved its verdict after marathon hearings in a batch of petitions filed by gaming corporations similar to Gameskraft and Delta Corp, together with business our bodies together with the All India Gaming Federation (AIGF), E-Gaming Federation (EGF), and the Federation of Indian Fantasy Sports (FIFS).

The authorities’s request for extra time comes simply weeks after Parliament handed laws banning the web actual cash gaming business. Legal specialists recommend that this shift in coverage might affect the Centre’s last written stance earlier than the court docket.

During the hearings, on August 12, senior counsels Arvind Datar, Dr. Abhishek Manu Singhvi, Gopal Sankaranarayanan, Tarun Gulati, Balbir Singh, and C. Aryama Sundaram introduced detailed arguments defending on-line skill-based gaming. They maintained that video games of talent can’t be equated with “betting and gambling” as outlined beneath the Constitution, citing landmark Supreme Court judgments within the RMDC and Okay.R. Lakshmanan instances.

The business had additionally challenged the Revenue Department’s try and classify on-line rummy stakes as “actionable claims” beneath GST regulation, arguing that such a transfer had no authorized foundation. Similarly, the idea of “House Advantage” utilized by the federal government for on line casino taxation was dismissed as a notional calculation with out benefit.

The rejoinders harassed that each tax jurisprudence and constitutional interpretation clearly distinguish video games of talent from playing, urging the court docket to quash the tax calls for and dismiss the federal government’s petitions.