MUMBAI: The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) will hold its apex council meeting on Sunday, in which the board will not only discuss the fate of the domestic season, but also discuss the tax issues that the Indian board needs to sort out with an eye on the 2021 T20 World Cup, for which the country is scheduled to hold.
The items on the agenda, accessed by ANI, are confirmation of the minutes of the 4th and 5th Apex Council meetings; discussion on domestic season 2020-21; discussion on tax solution for ICC T20 World Cup; discussion on the NCA project; hiring of personnel for NCA, Bengaluru and for BCCI headquarters at Mumbai; discussion on matters related to ICC’s 2023-2031 cycle; update on Bihar Cricket Association; to consider any other business which the chairman may consider necessary to be included in the agenda.
The tax issue was earlier also discussed in the BCCI annual general meeting on December 24 and it was decided that board secretary Jay Shah and treasurer Arun Dhumal would speak to the government to find a way forward in the matter.
As a BCCI member who attended the meeting told the ANI: “We are set to host the 2021 T20 World Cup as well as the 50-over World Cup in 2023. We need to speak to the government to see if we can get tax exemption and for this, we have decided that our secretary Jay Shah and treasurer Arun Dhumal will speak to the government.
“If the government does not agree, we will then decide on how to go about it. We also have the 2016 World T20 matter pending, so that will also have to be worked out.”
With the T20 World Cup just 10 months away, the International Cricket Council has already earmarked the United Arab Emirates as a backup venue to host the seventh edition of mega event, BCCI is stuck between a rock and a hard place.
The last deadline the BCCI missed was December 31, 2020 and the revised “final” deadline is in February.
The ICC has reportedly given two options to the BCCI. They are: the T20 World Cup will be relocated to the UAE, and the other is that the board provides an undertaking that if it fails to get the exemption then it will have to meet the tax liabilities, which could be a minimum of Rs 2.2658 billion (Rs 226.58 crore) and a high of Rs 9.0633 billion (Rs 906.33 crore).
Ironically, the BCCI’s application for tax exemption has been in limbo despite the well documented connections of the BCCI’s top brass within the Union government. Jay Shah is the son of Union Home Minister Amit Shah and Dhumal is the younger brother of Anurag Thakur, Minister of State for Finance and Corporate Affairs. And it is the Finance Ministry that will take the final call on tax exemption.
In 2011 as well, when ODI World Cup was held in India, the Manmohan Singh-led government sat on the application from the BCCI for inordinately long, before the then Prime Minister himself intervened and granted it at the last minute.
But for the 2016 T20 World Cup, staged in India, the government had granted only 10 per cent tax exemption and not full. And because the government had not granted full tax exemption, the ICC has withheld $23.75 million from the share that the BCCI was entitled to receive from the game’s world governing body, IANS notes.
For the record, when the ICC allots its tournaments, the two parties — ICC and tournament hosting country – sign a host agreement that binds the host to secure full tax exemption.
If the government eventually declines, the decision may affect BCCI’s chances of hosting the 50-over World Cup in 2023, already allotted to India, as well. Experts say that if the government declined exemption for the 2021 T20 World Cup, it was unlikely that it would change its mind for the 2023 World Cup, which will also require full tax exemption.
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