Premium membership from India

[RavenThunderclaw]

So I have been a premium member in the past. I stopped it some time ago since I stopped modding for a while. Last night I reinstalled FO4 and tried to get premium but this is what I see now:

"Due to tax levies on digital goods by the Indian government, we are no longer able to accept payments from residents of India. We apologise for any inconvenience caused."

Is there really now way to pay for Premium from India now? I mean I haven't seen this in any other websites till date. Can't pay through PayPal either. Any help is appreciated.

[Dark0ne]

Hi there,

 

I'm afraid that is correct. We have blocked payments from India for the foreseeable future.

 

We were contacted by your government's tax services recently telling us they have introduced a (relatively) new worldwide tax system on all digital services sold to Indian residents, even from businesses outside the country. The tax process is extremely long winded and stifling to a small business such as ours and, oddly, has absolutely no minimum earning threshold. A lot of other VAT-based tax systems have a "minimum amount" before it applies, for example, the EU's VAT MOSS tax system, which has similar principles to the Indian tax system has a minimum threshold of 10,000 euros a year, which we would be well under in India if India had such a threshold to help protect small businesses. Unfortunately, India does not have a minimum threshold and we are legally culpable to pay tax in India if a single Indian resident buy's Premium Membership on our site.

 

The amount we earn from Indian residents would never outweigh the cost of paying for an Indian accountant to process the tax forms and payments for us each month, nor would it be worth our time to do the work manually, so we've sadly had to block payments from India so we do not get sued by your government's tax services for breaking their rules.

 

It's a sorry state of affairs, and I only hope more countries don't implement these extremely complex tax systems without more protections and support for SMEs.

[Anarchy7591]

 

https://www.pwc.com/mu/en/services/india-desk/india-digital-tax.html

 

Exclusions to EL

Where an e-commerce operator which is making/providing/or facilitating e-commerce supply or services, has a fixed place PE in India & such e-commerce supply or services is effectively connected with such fixed place PE in India;

Where the EL is chargeable under other specified services such as online advertisement or provision of digital advertising space under the Indian laws; and;

Sales or turnover or gross receipts from e-commerce supply or services is less than INR 20 million (around USD 264k) during the previous year.

Income subject to EL will be tax exempt under other provisions of the Indian Income Tax Act from FY 2021-22.

 

[Dark0ne]

The tax the Indian government has chased us for is OIDAR: https://www.cbic.gov.in/resources//htdocs-cbec/gst/OIDAR.pdf

 

There is no minimum-threshold for OIDAR.