E-Content (e-books & e-Journals) delivered online by Indian companies and received online by Indian libraries has been under the levy of service tax for several years now. This service is covered under the nomenclature “Online Information and Database Access or Retrieval (OIDAR)”. However, the OIDAR service provided by foreign companies was kept outside the levy of service tax until now. Organizations administered by Government, Local Authority, or Government Authority and individuals were exempted from service tax on import of any services including OIDAR from foreign entities. This exemption is removed now. Amendments issued recently by the Service Tax Department through a set of four notifications 46/2016-ST, 47/2016-ST, 48/2016-ST and 49/2016-ST dated 9th November 2016 has resulted in the withdrawal of exemption. Effective 1st December 2016 all purchases/subscriptions for e-books/e-journals/databases by persons and organizations in India, whether offered by an Indian entity or a foreign entity, and irrespective of the place it is offered from, will attract service tax at the current rate of 15%. This will no-doubt increase the burden of already strained budget of our libraries. But, it will bring the OIDAR services offered by Indian companies and foreign companies on parity for taxation. Purely from the Government’s taxation benefit perspective, foreign companies too will have to pay tax to Indian Government when they do business with Indian organizations. Content and language of the amendments issued through a set of notifications mentioned above and other related amendments to various provisions of Service tax rules are quite complex for non-tax professionals like us to understand and interpret easily. For this reason, we have requested our tax consultants to prepare a note on these amendments in a simple language which will be posted on our Company website soon. The e-content purchase by libraries whether from local providers/vendors or foreign providers/vendors will now attract two types of taxes: 1. Service tax at 15% 2. TDS at 10% (The library is expected to deduct this amount and pay the income tax authorities which can be re-claimed by the suppliers of e-books/e-journals from their respective Governments while filing tax returns. We at Informatics have been quite vocal about the need for strict compliance of the laws of the land by both suppliers and receivers of the goods & services as applicable from time to time. We will be happy to assist libraries in the process of understanding the procedural requirements involved with the compliance of tax laws as applicable to e-content purchased by libraries. *|*N. V. Sathyanarayana*|*Informatics India Ltd.*|*Bangalore 560004*|*INDIA *|* *|**www.informaticsglobal.com http://www.informaticsglobal.com/**|* -- *Confidentiality Notice: *T*his electronic message transmission, including any attachment(s), may contain confidential, proprietary, or privileged information from Informatics Publishing Limited. If you are not the intended recipient, be advised that any dissemination, copying, distribution, printing or use of the contents of the information contained in this electronic message is strictly prohibited. If you have received this electronic message by error, please destroy all copies of the message and contact the sender immediately by either replying to this message or calling 91-80-40387777.* -- This message has been scanned for viruses and dangerous content by MailScanner, and is believed to be clean.