Paying Tax? Adsense publisher in India [Ask]

Should we pay additional tax for Google adsense money?

[sid786]

Any Indians around here who are paying tax for the money they make through Adsense?

This is the first time I am getting my tax file and I know very little about this. However, the accountant addressed me said - Around 15% would be deduced from the actual adsense money, which is an significant amount of money I don't want to lose.

As there are many Indians around, I would love to know if you all are paying tax for this amount? The acc. told me to get an TDS certificate that will let go off the tax.

What do I do?

[Green_Grass]

Show it as income from website. Pay normal income tax on it.

Most CA's have very little idea about adSense income. Most will give contradictory info.

Here is an interesting link on its treatment in India. Some people pay service tax on it if it is more than Rs 10 lakh annually. However this is inherently flawed IMHO.

[labnol.org...]

[sid786]

Thank you for the response.

Can you elaborate on 'Pay Normal income tax'.. 15% is a huge sum of money, at least in India as you might know.

The article from labnol is 3 year old, does it still hold true?

Cheers..

[Green_Grass]

You should be able to set off a few expenses against the income..viz.. hosting, some part of the broadband cost, employee? cost etc. And then pay income tax on the remainder as per the tax slab you are placed in. It could be anything from zero to 30%.

This should be treated as business income from website and income tax should be paid on the nett income. It seems you will need the assistance of a CA to prepare your tax returns. Pls do so accordingly. The labnol article indicates the line of tax treatment. It is an opnion and opinions are not written in stone.

[rajivatre]

I would agree with green_grass but I would add something else as well. if your income through adsense exceeds 10 lac (1 million) INR then you can come under service tax scanner. So be careful of how you show your income. In case of your income is exceeding 10 lacs per year you need to pay service tax on the full amount.
CAs will not be able to tell you as they will not understand the whole working of Adsense. So its better to show your income as something CAs and Income tax people will understand such as custom Software development or website designing or even services given to google :).
You will be better off with it.
Rajiv