If longstanding tax positions, accepted by the industry and regulators, can be reopened and penalised retrospectively, no sector in India’s digital economy is safe.
Every time Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal speaks, you would think India is the world’s preeminent export hub. In reality, our share of global merchandise exports is under 3% and shrinking.
Govt inaction has 3 impacts on e-gaming: smaller companies operating in grey market to avoid tax, bigger ones moving out of the country, and international companies pausing plans to enter India.
States can recover past tax dues but not for period before 1 April 2005 while tax arrears can be paid over a staggered period of 12 years, top court clarifies.
India needs to offer stability in its regulatory regime and rule of law in order to compete with countries like Vietnam that are vying for space vacated by China.
Retrospective taxes are just one facet of arbitrary state action. MNCs that have committed billions of dollars have many other legal minefields awaiting them.
Decision will end India’s dispute with Vodafone Plc and Cairn Energy Plc, and in 15 other similar cases. FM Sitharaman notes that the retrospective tax became a ‘sore point’ with investors.
Cairn Energy has been moving aggressively to push the Modi govt to comply with the $1.7 billion arbitration award that it won in December 2020 in the retrospective taxation case.
Turning anyone who ever sparred with Nehru and Gandhi into a trophy of appropriation has long been both the Hindu Right's sport and strategy, and a rather successful one.
Russia now accounts for about half of India’s crude imports. Experts say this reflects source diversification, but high concentration carries risks from sanctions, shipping curbs.
This opens up a market worth several thousand crores while allowing defence ministry to diversify and speed up production at a time when armed forces are looking to build missile stock.
At some point Pakistani dictators begin to show paranoia. That’s the strategic reality most relevant to India since the late fifties. Munir’s case is worse, like some sudden acrophobia.
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