Consideration received under a composite contract for services which are ancillary to the main objective of providing a software user license held to be in the nature of Royalty

Recently in the case of Lanka Hydraulic Institute Limited In AAR No. 874 of 2010, the Authority for Advance Rulings (AAR) held that where the scope of work under a contract is primarily related to technology transfer by way of software along with ancillary services in the nature of field data collection/mathematical model studies, the consideration would constitute “Royalty” under Article 12 of the Double Taxation Avoidance Agreement with Sri Lanka (the tax treaty). The applicant had argued that since there was no specific Article in the tax treaty for taxation of Fees for Technica...