Taxing the Rich Farmers – Current status of Farm Taxes, pros and cons

Recently, economist Bibek Debroy, a member of the NITI Aayog, recommended that the agricultural income above a certain threshold should be taxed. This brought back the question of the status of taxation on agriculture. Almost 20% of GDP of the country comes from the agricultural sector but still its share in the revenue generated in […]

Policy Measures on Transfer Pricing

Transfer pricing is one of the methods of tax avoidance. It refers to allocating expenses to high tax countries and profits to low tax countries to reduce tax liability. This is generally done within the associated companies. Transfer pricing is illegal and hurts the economy. Concept Take an example here. In 2009-10, TCS had shown […]

GST and Taxation of Intangibles

One of the major taxation problems in India is the taxation on intangible products and services. These include Intellectual property (IP) such as patents, copyrights and trade secrets and software, software services such as SAAS. This problem is global and not specific to India. In most VAT/GST countries, the characterization of intangibles is full of […]

Distribution of Tax Revenues: Constitutional Provisions

Article 268 to 281 in the constitution of India deal with the distribution of tax revenues. These articles have been amended from time to time, for example 88th amendment provided for service tax via article 268-A. Some articles have been amended as per recommendations of finance commission also. The current position is as follows: Article […]

Draft Place of Effective Management (PoEM) Rules

Residential status of the companies is an important factor in deciding their tax liabilities. The income tax act provides that a company is resident in India if it fulfils either of the following two conditions: It is an Indian company During a particular financial year, the control and management of its affairs is situated wholly […]