The Double Tax Avoidance Agreement (DTAA) is essentially a bilateral agreement entered into between two countries. The basic objective is to promote and foster economic trade and investment between two Countries by avoiding double taxation.

TRIAD GESTCO LTD. VERSUS HER MAJESTY THE QUEEN (Canada Tax Court) – The transactions undertaken by the appellant amount to abusive tax avoidance because they defeat the underlying rationale of the capital loss provisions in the Act. Through the manipulation of the fiscal ‘amount’ of the Rcongold common shares, the appellant created artificially devalued property that was transferred to a person within the same economic unit to create an artificial capital loss without incurring any real economic loss. On August 27, 2002, the appellant owned shares of Rcongold which had a fair market value of $8 million (the common shares). On August 28, 2002, the appellant continued to own shares of Rcongold which had a fair market value of $8 million (the Class ‘E’ shares) and after the disposition of the common shares of Rcongold to the PCT, the appellant continued to own shares in Rcongold having a fair market value of $8 million.

Dismissing the notion that Mauritius is a tax haven, the island nation’s Vice Prime Minister Ramakrishna Sithanen on Tuesday said he has not received any complaints from India about routing investments via his country to evade taxes. However, Sithanen, who is also the finance and economic development minister, promised to cooperate with Indian authorities to check tax evasion in case of complaints, but added his country would not welcome ‘fishing expeditions’.

Income Tax authorities are planning to broaden the tax base, seek greater exchange of information under the tax treaties and provide better services to tax payers by 2020 when the direct tax reforms would be firmly in place. The apex direct tax body, Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT), has formed seven committees comprising senior revenue officials to come out with a draft Vision 2020 document that would delineate ways to increase tax collections in a non-intrusive manner.

A revised Agreement and Protocol between India and Finland for Avoidance of Double Taxation and the Prevention of Fiscal Evasion with respect to Taxes on Income (DTAA) was signed by Sh. S.S.N.Moorthy, Chairman, CBDT on behalf of Government of India and Ms Terhi Hakala, the Ambassador of Finland to India, on behalf of Government of Finland, here today.

After taxing investors for dividend stripping, the Income Tax (I-T) Department is gearing up to tax bonus stripping. Official sources say scrutiny of returns filed by companies, brokers and individuals active in the stock markets and in possession of shares revealed wide use of this mechanism to evade tax.

The forthcoming Union budget may have an anti-avoidance provision, which can effectively check convoluted transactions devised exclusively for the purpose of evading paying taxes in India. The finance ministry, said revenue department officials, is contemplating the idea of vesting powers with the commissioners of Income-tax (I-T) to declare a transaction a sham, if there is a reason to believe that its purpose is to avoid tax in this country.

This follows a renewed effort by CBDT to seek clarification on the issue. The finance ministry has decided to keep the issue of taxing participatory notes (P-Notes) on the back burner to encourage foreign inflows. These views follow a renewed effort by the Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) to seek a clarification on the taxation of the P-Notes. Sources said the clarification was sought since it was noticed that the issuance of these notes had gone up, following a buoyancy in the equity market.

Tax Planning :- Tax planning as a concept had at a point of time suffered degradation and for a while seemed to be a euphemism for tax evasion. This was the fall-out of some observations in McDowell’s case, [154 ITR 148 (SC)] especially in the separate opinion of Justice Chinnappa Reddy. But the libel did not stay too long. Sabyasachi Mukherjee, Justice of the Supreme Court salvaged its respectability by observing tax avoidance by genuine transactions is not evil.

Cable & Wireless Networks India Private Limited („the applicant?) is engaged in the business of providing international and domestic long distance telecommunication services in India. It proposes to enter into an agreement with its group company, Cable and Wireless UK („C&W UK?) to provide end to end international long distance telecommunication services to its Indian customers.