|
BANGALORE: A division bench of the Karnataka High Court has stayed the operation
of a 17 September 2008 order of a single bench, quashing a provisio of Section
4 of the Karnataka Entertainment Tax Act 1958. Exhibitors of Kannada will now
have to pay Rs 48 per show instead of Rs 118.
The
exhibition of non-Kannada films, however, will still attract an entertainment
tax of Rs 118. The
provisio allowed the state to levy entertainment tax for the state’s languages
- notably Kannada, Konkani, Kodava, Tulu and Banjara and a different one for exhibiting
films of other languages in Karnataka. Contesting
that the Kannada film industry was small and ill-equipped to compete with films
of other languages, the State had filed an appeal, stating that by virtue of the
earlier single bench order, it was forced to collect Rs 118 per show irrespective
of the language of a film. The
State earns about Rs 560 million annually by way of entertainment tax from 790
theatres. Twenty nine per cent of the revenue comes from theatres in Bangalore.
An Ernst
& Young report pegged the revenue of the Kannada film industry for FY 2009
at just about Rs 500 million, a little more than 2 per cent of the Rs 17.73 billion
revenues earned by the South Indian Film industry made up of the four states –
Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Kerala and Tamil Nadu. | 
