TEAM HERALD
PANJIM: While presently the government has no control over on-line booking of tickets for tourism related events held in Goa, it is planning to introduce systems to monitor e-bookings, in tune with amendments to the Entertainment Tax Act.
Following much controversy over on-line ticket booking, before permissions are granted for events, attempts have been made to get rules to the amended Entertainment Tax notified and brought into effect at the earliest to control this trend.
Presently on-line booking of tickets by organizers leaves authorities in the dark on estimates of crowds who attend the event and department of commercial taxes is compelled to physically monitor the event to assess the estimated sale of tickets for levying entertainment tax.
The government, through the amendment to the entertainment tax had sought to introduce the system of pre-endorsing of tickets for sale for an event, whether on-line or manually, major or minor event, to ensure effective tax collection on the same.
However, in the recent past, organisers have found easy ways out to hoodwink authorities and even start bookings prior to clearances and permissions from the departments concerned.
Both the departments of tourism and commercial taxes disclosed that event organizers engaged in on-line booking of tickets, particularly prior to grant of permissions, would be doing so at their own risk adding that sale of on-line tickets prior to any event makes no compulsion on the government to grant permission to an event.
Both departments admit that presently there are no rules that govern on-line booking of tickets for events since organizers have a free hand to do e-booking through booking agencies.
“Either they seem sure of getting permissions for an event or simply want to take the risk of selling tickets before permissions are granted,” said tourism department official.
“It is very difficult to cap event organizers on this issue,” the senior official. Officials are presently facing flak over cancellation of the Indo-Russian music fest issue.
On the other hand, the department of commercial taxes also expresses helplessness over the issue of on-line bookings for tourism events claiming that they make concerted efforts to check every event advertised or promoted and tickets booked online.
The official further pointed out that those events which come under entertainment tax and registered with department of commercial taxes are monitored during the event to assess the crowd and thereafter data furnished by organizers while filing their returns within a month of the conduct of the event are verified.
“In case of any doubts we can contact the booking agencies to verify sale of on-line tickets,” the department of commercial taxes official said.
Under the amended entertainment tax rules, the department of commercial taxes will know in advance the number of tickets proposed to be sold by organizers for any given event whether on-line or manually, major or minor.
This season alone four events were organized and tickets sold online. However the department is still in the process of verifying crowd attendance.
Allegations have already made that due the absence of rules and guidelines for issuing on-line booking of tickets may have cost the exchequer over Rs 10 crore. With the entertainment tax now hiked to 25 per cent, the government is expecting revenue of Rs 4 crore from this sector.
