Tax Authorities Identify Offshore Gambling Entities Evading GST

Certain online gambling and betting entities based out of the alleged tax havens – Cyprus, Mauritius and the Cayman Islands have been discovered by the Directorate General of GST Intelligence (DGGI) to be in collusion with high-net-worth individuals with the object of laundering money abroad. It is claimed that a few of the entities operate in India under the guise of fantasy gaming platforms.

It has been found by the tax authorities that in this manner, a total of thirty-eight platforms are offering services in the country without registering as a supplier of Online Information Database Access and Retrieval (OIDAR) and not paying Goods and Services Tax (GST). Moreover, outward remittances for the purposes of gambling and betting are disallowed under the Foreign Exchange Management Act, 1999. From the period extending from April 2019 to November 2022, the amount of tax evaded is estimated to be INR 12,000 Crore.