Indian Government decided to impose 125% duty on Chennai Express turnover, after the movie made huge box office collections. The government intends to reduce fiscal deficit and to fund the falling rupee by slapping a 'Loose Entertainment Tax' on movies like Chennai Express. While the step was welcomed by sensible people, Chennai Express producers slammed it as a move that will hurt investments in Bollywood. According to a government circular released late last night, Chennai Express producers will have to pay 125% of revenue they make from the movie. The revenue includes revenue from box office collection, satellite rights, audio rights and whatever they collect in other ways. It means if producers make 200 crore rupees, they will have to pay 250 crore rupees to the government.

"Our intention is clear; better utilize Indian human resources in more productive way than wasting time and money on stupid things like watching Chennai Express. I seriously have issues on people wasting time for 3 hours which is not going to add anything positive to the economy and instead it will add to the deficit and rupee devaluation. The UPA Government always favoured one policy, 'work hard, suck hard, chew hard and then shift that product of middle class to poor'. We have never deviated from this policy. Earlier we tried to curb stupid spending on gold, then TV sets and now on senseless movie tickets," said India's Finance Minister P Chidambaram. Chidambaram confirmed that he watched the movie on weekend and felt that it was seriously nonsensical and unproductive weekend.

The government on Monday evening slapped a 10% Customs duty and 12.5% countervailing duty on buying of TV sets from abroad, as part of its efforts to discourage import of non-essential items and reduce the current account deficit that has put enormous pressure on the rupee. The duty on movies like Chennai Express is next step to mobilize human resources to more productive work like late sitting in the office, work from home, over time and don't bother to work on Sundays as well. The government said it will take the move forward on case to case basis and will be applied only on movies making more than 100 crore rupees.

"We will identify waste of time and energy movies. That only will give us huge amount in terms of taxes and efficiency. So movies like Krrish 3 and Dhoom 3 can come under the gambit," said Chidambaram.

Few experts were happy that the government is cracking down the unproductive stuff like watching movies. However, they also demanded that people who use their time wasting on Twitter for bashing government on its policies rather than promoting to wide population should also come under the ploy.

"This will improve productivity and fuel growth," said an observer, Sanjay Jha in his twitter account. He also tweeted "Put some tax on twitteraties who waste their time on bashing government and #pappu."

The development however, criticized by Chennai Express producers and directors and both tweeted that the tax will be detrimental to investment in bollywood movies.

"I apologize to the people of India for making such hopeless movie. But paying 125% tax is not the punishment. This is Gandhian country and you always have to forgive people who make mistakes. By offering such offensive measure, the government will stop people investing in me and more directors like me," said Chennai Express director Rohit Shetty.

Benefits from imposing duty on Chennai Express