To curb tax avoidance by MNC’s, more digital transactions are brought into the tax net in the 2017 budget. The biggest beneficiaries are those companies earning through digital ads like Google, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn etc.
As these companies are located outside India, they are not even subjected to any tax regulations in India. Now, this Tax regulation probably called as Google Tax or Facebook Tax was first announced in the Financial Year 2017 by the Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, which are supposed to be levied from June 1.
Google Tax or Facebook Tax was announced to introduce a tax on the income as a result of a foreign e-commerce company outside India. Google Tax or Equilisation Levy ( as probably called so in India,) will impact on the social media giants like Facebook, Twitter, Google etc.
The main objective behind regularizing this act is to aim at technology companies that make money through online advertisements. This tax will help bring these companies under the tax radar in India.
With this new tax, India has joined the list of other Organisation For Economic Corporation and Development (OECD) and also European countries where the same tax is already in use.
The Indian government had already earned Rs. 100 crores revenue so far after initializing this Equalization Tax.