Income Tax officials have their eyes locked in on the Telugu film industry and they are checking the accounts of all the films that have been registered as blockbusters. They have already questioned the makers and distributors of Gautamiputra Satakarni and have now trained their guns on Ram Charan, who produced Khaidi No. 150, the comeback film of his father Chiranjeevi.
A week after the film released, Ram Charan’s uncle Allu Aravind held a press meet along with director V.V. Vinayak and announced that it was the first Telugu film to gross more than Rs 100 crore in just seven days.
Though Ram Charan was expected at that press meet, the announcement was finally made by Allu Aravind, who said that even though he was not related to the film, he was announcing the collections as a family member.
A source says that they wanted to show Chiranjeevi’s power, and thus Ram Charan requested his uncle to announce the collections. That was the only announcement ever made regarding the film, after which no official announcement or press release about the collections were put out.
“When the tax officials met Ram Charan, he told them that the film collected only Rs 75 crore and showed them a budget of Rs 60 crore, that included Rs 20 crore as Chiranjeevi’s remuneration and Rs 10 crore for Vinayak, on which they would pay individual taxes. He finally showed only Rs 15 crore profits, and said he would pay the tax,” says the source.
In truth, Chiranjeevi didn’t take any remuneration for the film as it was produced by his son and Vinayak also didn’t charge much because of his bond with Chiranjeevi.
“Ram Charan is very smart and told the officials that they released the film on their own and never sold it to anyone, so he didn’t show any business deals to the officials. He also told them that he is still waiting for the final chart from the exhibitors,” adds the source. Further, whentax officials asked him about Allu Aravind and Vinayak’s statements about collections, Ram Charan told them that “it was just a publicity trick”.
Whispers in the industry are that the film stands at number two in Tollywood after Baahubali, in terms of collections. It’s now up to Chiranjeevi and Ram Charan to officially announce how much their film actually collected and at which position it stands. Is Ram Charan showing all these calculations just to avoid paying tax?
