Via Slashdot, I came across this article at The Economic Times:
After blogs and websites, the government is planning a clampdown on BPOs and KPOs over, what it feels is, illegal use of internet telephony.[...]
According to official sources, foreign players such as Skype, in addition to disturbing the level-playing field for bonafide licensees, were also causing great revenue loss to the government as they did not pay the 12% service tax and 6% revenue share on internet telephony. Sources said DoT was keen to implement this move on security grounds too. Foreign service providers could be a “serious security threat as they did not come under any Indian regulator and policy framework,” they added.
An 18% tax rate on telephony?! That’s going to hurt some outsourced call centers.
1 response so far ↓
1 VV Kumar // 24 Dec 2006 at 9:49 pm
Banned on VOIP, will make less competitive India. World largest economy china , US have free use Voip to make their economy more competitive.
Lobby should come out from cashing poor consumer for voice switch, Voip will be future and no body can stop this is matter of time 2 to 3 years, when telco will start bleeding their revenue.