Winning Bizness Desk

Mumbai. Experts have opined that income received from social media company X (formerly Twitter) to users under an advertising revenue sharing scheme will be treated as supply under the GST law and will be taxed at the rate of 18 per cent. They say that if the total income of a person from various services including rental income, interest on bank fixed deposits (FD) and other professional services exceeds Rs 20 lakh in a year, then it will be taxed. Recently X has started sharing advertising revenue for its premium customers or verified organizations. To be a part of this revenue sharing programme, the account must have 15 million 'impressions' on posts in the last three months and at least 500 'followers'. Several social media users have recently tweeted about getting a revenue share from X.

GST will not be levied on the exempted income

Experts said that for computing the limit of Rs 20 lakh, such incomes would be included which are generally exempt from GST. However, GST will not be levied on the exempted income. Currently, individuals and entities earning revenue or income from services above Rs 20 lakh are eligible to take Goods and Services Tax (GST) registration. For some special category states like Mizoram, Meghalaya, Manipur, this limit is Rs 10 lakh. If a person earns interest income of Rs 20 lakhs annually from banks, and who neither pays GST nor has taken GST registration.

'export of services' under GST

Now, if that person earns any additional taxable income, say Rs 1 lakh, from a platform like Twitter, he will have to take a GST registration and the amount above Rs 20 lakh, ie Rs 1 lakh, will attract 18% GST. If content makers earn income from Twitter, it would be considered as 'export of services' under GST, since Twitter is outside India and consequently, the place of supply is outside India.