Case Law Details
In re Informatics Publishing Ltd. (GST AAR Karnataka)
Whether the supply of services in the nature of subscription to the J-Gate by the educational institutions is eligible for exemption from GST under Notification No. 2/2018- Central Tax (Rate)?
The transaction of the applicant is verified and found that the applicant is only providing access to the articles published in various journals and papers to its subscribers. It itself is not publishing any online journal, but only maintaining a database of links to all the journals. It is seen that the links to the articles are maintained in a metadata form and the subscriber when accesses to the platform can access to the individual article published in any of the journal available in the platform after reading the catalogue of the articles. The articles are catalogued and made available. Some of the articles are available for full view while some are only available in the catalogued form and the subscriber needs to subscribe the individual journal site to gain access to the full article. The applicant is collecting the subscription fee which is nothing but the fee charged to gain access to the data available in the database and to download the articles or information. This is an online information and database access and retrieval service provided by the applicant to its subscriber and not a sale or supply of online journals.
Applicant carries out the aggregation of various articles from various journals and creates a database for reference. They themselves do not publish any journals. So their activity is in the domain of aggregation and supply of educational material which has been published in journals by other persons.
One relevant and important information provided by the applicant is as follows:
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