New Trend: Actors seeking tax exemption

Of late, Indian actors are seeking the court’s help in evading the taxes for their imported cars. Very recently, we have seen Madras High Court imposing a fine on actor Vijay for not paying the import tax for his premium vehicle.

The same thing happened with Amala Paul and Fahadh Faasil as well in the past. Now, Dhanush joined the list.

In all the cases, the court had directed the actors to pay the tax and ordered them not to file a complaint on these issues.

Coming to Dhanush’s case, the Madras High Court refused the actor’s petition of tax exemption for his premium Rolls Royce car which was imported from London.

He filed the petition in 2015 when he was imposed with a tax of Rs. 60.66 lakhs for importing the vehicle. He had paid half the amount and then filed a complaint. Now, the High Court rejected his plea and ordered him to pay the rest of the amount within 48 hours.

“If your intentions were genuine you should have paid the tax when the Supreme court settled the matter in 2018. But now after the High Court listed it for passing the order, you are seeking to withdraw,” stated the court. The magistrate also lamented on the actor saying that even a milk vendor or a daily wage worker is paying the tax for every liter of petrol he buys, but he never approaches the court complaining about it.

“No doubt you have the right to move the court but you should have paid the tax and withdrawn the petition at least after the Supreme court settled the issue in 2018,” it further added.

After this series of tax exemption rejections from the courts, it has to be seen if the actors stop complaining about import taxes and start paying the fees for their premium vehicles.

Earlier, an FIR has been booked against the actors for registering their luxury vehicles in Puducherry using fudged documents to allegedly evade the tax in Kerala.