MUMBAI: It's an annual pre-budget ritual. And one of India’s leading DTH companies has made a fresh request to the finance ministry, one that it has been making for several years now. Dish TV has requested the ministry to exempt it from the 12.36 per cent service tax that it pays per subscriber till the time the Goods and Services Tax (GST) is implemented.

“Every year before the budget, the ministry asks all industries to send in their suggestions. We wrote to them about a month ago and this was one of our suggestions that we have been putting forth since nearly six or seven years,” says Dish TV CEO R C Venkateish.

DTH operators claim that they have to pay up to 50 per cent taxes while cable operators have to bear just about 32 per cent. The tax burden makes DTH expensive for consumers as well. “DTH is the most taxed in this industry,” states Venkateish.

The various taxes thrust on DTH players include service tax, entertainment tax ranging from 10 to 45 per cent in various states, VAT on equipments and 10 per cent of their annual gross subscription revenues as licence fees to the government.