Euronet Services India Pvt. Ltd. Vs DCIT (ITAT Bangalore)
The Income Tax Appellate Tribunal (ITAT), Bangalore, considered the assessee’s appeal against the final assessment order passed under Sections 143(3) read with 144C(13) of the Income-tax Act, 1961. The assessee, a subsidiary of EFT Services Holding B.V., Netherlands, was engaged in processing secure electronic financial and payment transactions, operating a private ATM shared network, providing mobile recharge services, and rendering software development-related services, including software testing and implementation, to its associated enterprises (AEs). The Assessing Officer referred the international transactions to the Transfer Pricing Officer (TPO), who rejected the assessee’s transfer pricing documentation, conducted a fresh comparability analysis, selected new comparables, and proposed a transfer pricing adjustment of ₹1,54,77,728. The draft assessment order also included a disallowance of ₹74,32,27,645 towards foreign outward remittance. The Dispute Resolution Panel (DRP) upheld the transfer pricing adjustment, and the Assessing Officer passed the final assessment order, following which the assessee appealed before the Tribunal.
The Tribunal admitted the additional grounds seeking exclusion of Great Software Laboratory Private Limited, Elveego Circuits Private Limited, Infobeans Technologies Limited and Thirdware Solutions Limited, and inclusion of Isummation Technologies Private Limited, holding that the additional grounds were legal in nature and relevant for deciding the issues. An additional ground challenging the validity of the DRP directions for absence of a computer-generated DIN was withdrawn after the assessee acknowledged that the DIN had been separately intimated on the same date, and the Tribunal dismissed that ground as withdrawn.
