Government of India acknowledges Advertising as “speciality design”

This is good news and bad.

The Directorate General Service Tax in India has announced it plans to increase the burden of Service Tax on specility design services including advertising (the others are industrial and jewellery design).

The good news is that someone’s finally acknowledging that what advertising people create is special, and not something anyone can do.

The bad news is for all the clients who think they can do layouts better, and have messed with many a great campaign with their own misplaced sense of design and aesthetics. They’re now going to pay more for it!!

I’m not sure if this hike will actually happen, or how it’s going to affect advertising rate cards which are already under lots of pressure from clients.

Well, only time will tell. Stay tuned for updates on this front.