The Mumbai bench of the Income Tax Appellate Tribunal (ITAT) has recently pronounced its ruling on an appeal originating from a transfer pricing adjustment imposed on 3 Global Services Private Limited (“assessee”). The assessee operates in the voice based customer care segment within the IT-enabled services (ITeS) industry. During financial year 2003-04, the assessee rendered services to its associated enterprises (“AEs”).
A computer software when put into a media and sold, it becomes goods like any other audio cassette or painting on canvass or book. The amount paid by the assessee towards purchase of IXOS-eCON for R/3 50 users cannot be treated as payment of royalty taxable in India under Article 12 of DTAA between India and Singapore. Therefore, the assessee, in our opinion, is not liable to deduct tax at source.
Expenditure incurred on food and beverages at the guest houses maintained by the assessee; the case of the Revenue is that there is no evidence to show that the impugned expenditure was incurred on the employees in connection with their stay during official visits whereas assessee company submits that the impugned expenditure was incurred for the purpose of business, since company’s employees stayed in the inspection/guest house near factories while carrying out their official duties and during such period food and beverages were provided to them and such expenditure is allowable as deduction under Explanation 2 to Section 37 (2) of the Act.
The assessee made payments to sub-contractors during the previous year and though s. 194C requires TDS at the stage of payment/credit, did not do so. The tax was, however, deducted on 31st March and paid over in Sept before the due date for filing the return. The AO took the view that while the payment made to the sub-contractor for March was allowable, the payments for the earlier months was disallowable u/s 40(a)(ia).
Since the assessee disclosed additional income consequent to the search and seizure proceedings, the A.O. and the CIT(A) were correct in levying penalty.
The assessee, a broker, claimed deduction for bad debts in respect of shares purchased by him for his clients. The AO rejected the claim though the CIT (A) upheld it. On appeal by the Revenue, the matter was referred to the Special Bench. Before the Special Bench, the department argued that u/s 36(2), no deduction on account of bad debt can be allowed unless “such debt or part thereof has been taken into account in computing the income of the assessee”.
Professional Firms can have a ‘service PE’. The words “indirectly attributable to the PE” encompass the “force of attraction” principle and even services rendered offshore for Indian projects are assessable in India
The assessee, engaged in the business of manufacture and export of diamonds and jewellery, claimed that having regard to the nature of the product, none of the transfer pricing methods were applicable for benchmarking the international transactions with associated enterprises. The TPO rejected the argument on the ground that the Transactional Net Margin Method (TNMM) was applicable and made an adjustment by comparing the enterprise level operating margins.
The assessee, a Singaporean company with a PE in India, obtained rights from the Global Cricket Council, Singapore, for telecast of cricket matches in India. The AO took the view that the payment for the said rights constituted “royalty” in the hands of GCC u/s 9(1)(vi) & Article 12(7) of the India-Singapore DTAA and that it had arisen in India on the ground thatthe payer had a PE in India and there was a direct nexus between collection of advertisement revenue in India and payment for the rights.
In a recent decision Special Bench (SB) of the Mumbai Income Tax Appellate Tribunal in the case of Datacraft India Ltd. (Taxpayer) [ITA No.7462 & 754/ Mum/ 2007]on the issue of whether routers and switches can be classified as computer entitled to depreciation at 60% or have to be classified as general plant and machinery entitled to depreciation at 25%, under the provisions of the Indian Tax Laws (ITL) held that the definition of computer should not be restricted to the central processing unit (CPU) of computer
