Last week, the Supreme Court stayed the show-cause notices issued by the Directorate General of GST Intelligence to online gaming companies and casinos, demanding payment of around Rs 1.2 lakh crore in retrospectives taxes. This is a significant development, giving a ray of hope to the country’s online gaming sector, which has been in the doldrums for the past one-and-a- half years.
The GST Council had, in October 2023, hiked the goods and services tax levied on real-money gaming companies to 28% of the full face value of all bets placed. The tax slab was to apply retrospectively, from August …