Can Abhishek Bachan and Aishwarya Bachan be asked to pay Service Tax on the telecast of their marriage?

By Vijay Kumar

This was a question the Tribunal asked. Excerpts from the CESTAT judgement.

By taking a common example from recent time, coverage of marriage rites between celebrity couple Arun Nair and Elizabeth Hurley are reported to be exclusively sold to “Hello” magazine and similarly there are rumours of sale of “marriage function” of leading movie actor AbhishekBachhan with Aishwarya Rai to a particular channel for broadcasting. Will such sale of performance rights coverage would convert the seller into an advertising agency, providing any service in relation to advertisement to a client. The answer is emphatic ‘No’.

This was incidentally the case of BCCI. The Cricket Board won the case with as much ease as Australia beating BanglaDesh.

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