GST council meeting
The 48th GST Council meeting had announced amendments to be made
to the provisions relating to 'Online Information and Database
Access or Retrieval services' (OIDAR) to
reduce interpretation issues and litigation on taxability of such
services. The Finance Bill 2023 has now proposed amendments to the
definition of OIDAR and Non-Taxable On-line Recipient
(NTOR) thereby, significantly expanding the scope
of taxability.
Amendment Proposed
The definition of OIDAR has been amended to exclude the
condition of "essentially automated and involving minimum
human intervention". Further, the definition of NTOR has
been substituted to mean "any unregistered person
receiving online information and database access or retrieval
services located in taxable territory". Here, it has been
clarified that unregistered person will include persons who are
solely registered for the purpose of tax deduction at source
(TDS) such as department or establishment
