Income received from ad revenue sharing plan of X is liable to GST

Individuals receiving remuneration from X (formerly Twitter) as part of its advertisement revenue sharing plan, will be treated as supply under the GST law and will be subject to 18 per cent tax. The tax will kick in if the total income from various services, including rental income, and other professional services, rendered by an individual exceeds Rs 20 lakh in a year. 

In recent times, X has started advertisement revenue sharing for its X Premium subscribers or verified organisations. To be able to be part of this revenue sharing programme, the account needs to have 15 million organic impressions on the posts in the last three months and have at least 500 followers. 

Content creators on X are able to set up Ad Revenue Sharing and Creator Subscriptions independently. Many social media users have in the recent past posted tweets about receiving revenue share from X. 

According to experts, it is not only the revenue share earnings from Twitter posts, but income from other sources, like interest, rental income, which will contribute to the calculation of the threshold for GST registration. 

For calculating the Rs 20-lakh threshold, the revenues which are otherwise exempt from GST would be included. However, GST would not be leviable on such exempt income. 

Currently, individuals and entities earning revenues or income from services exceeding Rs 20 lakh are liable to take Goods and Services Tax registration. The limit is Rs 10 lakh for some special category states like Mizoram, Meghalaya, and Manipur.