Ad Policies & Regulations

UP state GST likely to subsume ad revenue tax

The key question is, will local bodies let go of the tax revenues. Media owners don’t’ expect any adverse impact of the impending change in ad tax revenue policy

Published

May 10, 2017

Bhawana Anand

In Uttar Pradesh, the outdoor advertisement revenue tax will likely be collected by the state GST department instead of the local bodies in the coming months. As of now, the municipal corporations had been collecting the taxes applied on different outdoor formats including hoardings, posters, banners, wall painting and transit advertising.

A proposal for the change in state advertising revenue tax collection is pending approval of the state Cabinet. The clearance is likely to be given soon as the Centre gears up to roll out GST nationwide.

Media owners have not been consulted or informed on this but “we welcome this development. We don’t see any hassles for media owners,” said Anil Kumar, Vice President, Outdoor Advertising Agency Association, Lucknow.

However, he told Media4Growth that the civic bodies will not let go of the advertising revenues. “They might make some modifications in the terms and policy to keep some part of it for the civic bodies,” he said.“It is quite early to say that what changes will be introduced with regard to ad tax revenue collection. But there won’t be anything unacceptable to the media owners,” said Kumar. Such a change has also been introduced in the state of Haryana.