Google's Play Store is absorbing the 15% digital service tax that the Indian government started requiring foreign businesses to pay from December last year. The company, which runs the Play Store business out of an offshore entity in Ireland, has the infrastructure to support tax-inclusive pricing on its billing platform; this is supported in 37 countries, including Australia, Japan, Italy, Belgium, and the UK. Three months after the digital service tax came into force in India, Google has yet to enable tax-inclusive pricing for India; it is instead manually paying the tax without showing the amount in Play Store purchase receipts. In a statement to MediaNama, Google clarified that it "has been paying the taxes since 1Dec 2016 [sic] and this will continue till it introduces the changes in this Play store invoices". Google isn't using its tax-inclusive pricing system to take the responsibility of taxing individual purchases on the Play Store. Apps, Books, Films, and Music purchases from the Play Store all show a tax of "₹0.00" in Play Store purchase receipts. Google had earlier said that this tax "will be applicable" on individual Play Store purchases. The Play Store's merchant guidelines currently state that app developers around the world are responsible for determining whether they are responsible for filing taxes in India, and for actually going through the process of filing them. Google has refuted this guideline in its response to MediaNama. The 15% digital tax In November, the Indian government announced that companies outside India offering digital services…
