The Business Standard reports that the Supreme Court of India has upheld the validity of the National Company Law Tribunal. A Constitution Bench of the Court delivered the judgment more than a year after hearing arguments on an appeal filed against a decision of the Madras High Court in R. Gandhi v. Union of India. In an earlier post, I had...
Proposed changes in India’s arbitration law: Part I
The Ministry of Law and Justice has recently released a Consultation Paper on Arbitration on ‘Proposed Amendments to the Arbitration & Conciliation Act, 1996’. We would like to thank Mr. Bhushan Shah for bringing this to our attention. In this post, I will briefly look at two of the main changes proposed; and some more changes will be examined in a second post. 1. The extent of Part I of the...
Porrits & Spencer: Form over Substance Reaffirmed
We have extensively discussed issues around tax avoidance previously; and one of the questions in this regard is the exact relationship between the 5-Judge Bench decision in McDowell and the subsequent 2-Judge Bench decision Azadi. To briefly recapitulate, in McDowell, Justice Chinappa Reddy took a strong stance against tax avoidance and effectively equated avoidance with evasion. Under Justice...
Substance over Form in Taxation: The Recent English Approach
We have at several times on this blog discussed issues around the legality of tax avoidance. In debates around avoidance/evasion distinction, reference is often made to the classic English cases – Duke of Westminster, Ramsay, Furniss, Macniven and others. In this background, it might be useful to consider the latest approach of the English Courts to tax planning activities. The latest...
E*Trade Mauritius: Reaffirming legal form over economic substance
The Authority of Advance Rulings has issued its ruling in the matter of E*Trade Mauritius; and the Ruling essentially follows the decision of the Supreme Court in Azadi Bachao Andolan. The facts before the Authority were that the Applicant was a company incorporated in the Mauritius, and had been issued a Tax Residency Certificate by the Mauritius income tax authorities...
Taxation and the Budget: An Initial Assessment of the Finance Bill, 2010
From the perspective of taxation (particularly income tax and service tax), the budget proposes changes in several areas. Importantly, the Finance Minister has clarified that the Direct Taxes Code will be introduced from 1st April, 2011. The GST will also be sought to be implemented from that date. In this post, I shall look at a few issues in income tax and service tax that may arise out of the...
Event Announcement: 3rd NLSIR Symposium on Corporate Governance
The National Law School of India Review (NLSIR), the flagship journal of the National Law School of India University, Bangalore, will be hosting the 3rd Annual NLSIR Symposium, ‘Indian Corporate Law and Corporate Governance: At the Crossroads’, in Bangalore, on 10th and 11th April, 2010. Extracts from the concept note for the Symposium may be of interest to our readers...
TDS u/s 195: Samsung Electronics appeal in the Supreme Court
We have discussed the issue of TDS u/s 195 of the Income Tax Act, 1961 a few times earlier; and have also discussed a recent judgment of the Karnataka High Court in Samsung Electronics. The decision holds that deduction must be made u/s 195 on all sums paid to a non-resident, irrespective of the chargeability of the sum.s As was argued in the earlier posts, this view merits reconsideration. In a...
Service Tax and Works Contracts
A recent decision of the Punjab and Haryana High Court Commissioner of Central Excise v. Vahoo Colour Lab clarifies the scope of service tax in the context of works contracts. Issues around works contracts have been controversial in relation to income tax as well as sales tax. The controversy in income tax law (in relation to TDS under Section 194C) has been discussed here; and the issue of sales...
New Blog for Indian Legal Research
I would like to highlight the Legal Research India blog recently started by Arjun Sheoran, student at the National Law School of India University. Essentially, the blog allows readers/users to search the web for relevant legal materials. The search is a Google custom search; with the advantage that it is restricted to some selected websites, listed here – so the results are likely to be more...
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