The Indian Government has finally realised that the IPL and the BCCI are the same for them! So, anything that the IPL is involved in, will automatically mean that it is the responsibility of the BCCI. It is a wonder that it has taken them so many years of the tournament being played to come to such a conclusion.
The Indian revenue department decided on Wednesday that the Indian Premier League is not a different body from the apex cricket body in India. It also ruled that all the money-related transactions that the IPL would have got into in the last three years or so, will ultimately be the responsibility for the BCCI.
A local newspaper reported that there was a meeting held by the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Finance, and revenue secretary Sunil Mitra said that the two bodies, BCCI and IPL are no different when it came to taxation.
This means that the board is liable if the government goes on to find that there were any money-related bungling in the IPL committed by the Lalit Modi. Modi has been suspended by the BCCI and there is an ongoing investigation against him.
Former finance minister, Yashwant Sinha asked the members of the meeting, why “the agencies [had] failed to gather information on the source of funds used for bidding for franchises.”
The other big guns in the meeting were the likes of heads of the Central Board of Excise and Customs (CBEC), the Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) and the Enforcement Directorate (ED).
The government became involved with the investigation of the money-frau associated with the IPL after Lalit Modi questioned the presence of Shashi Tharoor in the IPL franchise of Kochi. Ultimately, this led to the sacking of Tharoor from his role as a Union Minister and Modi as the IPL chairman.
The IPL needs to pay service tax on the franchise fees paid by the teams to the board, the payments made to IMG for managing the league, and the revenue generated by the franchises from the sale advertising space.
