Holy Cow! You have to pay more on food, cinema tickets, banquet halls in Haryana?

Zee Media Bureau

Chandigarh: In the latest, Haryana Gau Sewa Ayog has sent a proposal to the ruling government to impose 5 percent “cow tax” on cinema tickets, banquet hall and food in an effort to create an independent corpus for cow welfare. As per media reports, the proposal is in addition to 20 percent entertainment tax which is already being levied.

In addition, there are talks about taxing banquet hall for Rs 2,100 at the time of booking. There is also proposal to divert 50 percent donations from temples managed by government so as to protect cows.

In Kerala, already the government has introduced a ‘fat tax’ on food items that fall in the category of junk food, like pizzas, burgers, tacos, sandwich among others.

In the latest budget speech, the state's Finance Minister said a fat tax of 14.5 percent would be imposed on branded restaurants selling food like pizzas, burgers, tacos, doughnuts, sandwiches, pasta, burger patty and bread-filling. Fast-food chains like McDonalds, Dominos, Pizza Hut, Subway among others are likely to see a hit on their sales as they would be forced to up the prices and pass on the burden to consumers.