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DATE: December 18, 2020 (Date of pronouncement)
DATE: December 23, 2020 (Date of publication)
AY: 2014-15
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CITATION:
The AO's refusal to grant foreign tax credit under article 23(2) of India Japan DTAA on the ground that the assessee's income (legal fees) was not taxable in Japan under Article 14 (Independent Personal Services) & that the taxes were wrongly withheld in Japan is not justified. The income could have been taxed under Article 12 (Fees for Technical Services). Even otherwise, one has to take a judicious call as to whether the view adopted by the source jurisdiction of taxing the income is a reasonable and bonafide view, which may or may not be the same as the legal position in the residence jurisdiction. The view of the treaty partner should be adopted unless it is wholly unreasonable or manifestly erroneous

So far as determination of question as to whether or not the taxation has been done in the source country “in accordance with the provisions of this Convention, may be taxed in … (the source jurisdiction)”, one has to take a judicious call as to whether the view so adopted by the source jurisdiction is a reasonable and bonafide view, which may or may not be the same as the legal position in the residence jurisdiction. While it is indeed desirable that there should be uniformity in tax treaty interpretation in the treaty partner jurisdictions, it may not always be possible to do so in view of a large variety of variations, such as the sovereignty of judicial systems, domestic law overrides on the treaty provisions, the legal framework in which the treaties are to be interpreted, and the judge-made law in the respective jurisdictions etc. In a situation in which a transaction by resident of one of the contracting states is to be examined in both the treaty partner jurisdictions, from the point of view of taxability of income arising therefrom, different treatments being given by the treaty partner jurisdictions will result in incongruity and undue hardship to the assessee.

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DATE: December 11, 2020 (Date of pronouncement)
DATE: December 23, 2020 (Date of publication)
AY: 2015-16
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CITATION:
(i) The fact that profits of foreign branches of a resident are taxed outside India under tax treaties does not imply that the said income is not taxable in India. The entire global income has to be taxed in India. The assesseee is entitled to credit for taxes paid abroad, as admissible under the treaty or the domestic law. (ii) S. 115JB applies to banking companies after the 2012 amendment. Even profits of foreign branches which are taxed under the tax treaties are also liable for MAT. (iii) The argument that S. 90 overrides S. 115JB and so the incomes taxed abroad should be excluded from taxation of book profits u/s 115 JB is not correct. Treaty protection come normally into play for taxation of a non-resident in India, i.e. source country taxation, and not for taxation of a resident in whose hands global income is to be taxed anyway. All that one gets in the residence jurisdiction, by the virtue of tax treaties, is tax credits for the taxes paid abroad.

The effect of Hon’ble Supreme Court’s judgment in Kulandagan Chettiar (267 ITR 654) that income taxable in the source jurisdiction under the treaty provisions cannot be included in total income of the assessee is clearly overruled by the legislative developments. It is specifically legislated that the mere fact of taxability in the treaty partner jurisdiction will not take it out of the ambit of taxable income of an assessee in India and that “such income shall be included in his total income chargeable to tax in India in accordance with the provisions of the Income-tax Act, 1961 (43 of 1961), and relief shall be granted in accordance with the method for elimination or avoidance of double taxation provided in such agreement”. A coordinate bench of this Tribunal, in the case of Essar Oil Ltd (supra) also proceeded to hold that this notification was retrospective in effect inasmuch as it applied with effect from 1st April 2004 i.e. the date on which sub-section 3 was introduced in Section 90.

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DATE: December 4, 2020 (Date of pronouncement)
DATE: December 18, 2020 (Date of publication)
AY: 2014-15
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CITATION:
(i) A representative office of a foreign enterprise is not a taxable unit. The foreign enterprise is the taxable unit. A return of income filed in the name of the representative office, with the PAN of the enterprise, offering only the income of the representative office & excluding the other Indian income of the enterprise is not proper. However, as the error is inadvertent and without any consequences in terms of loss of revenue, a pragmatic approach must be adopted and the assessee should not be subjected to avoidable inconvenience (ii) As regards the taxability of interest income under the India-Germany DTAA, as the debt claim in question was not "effectively connected" to the alleged PE, the exclusion article 11(5) was not triggered and the taxability under article 7 does not come into play (Entire law discussed in detail)

It is an undisputed fact that the entire related interest income has been brought to tax in the hands of the foreign enterprise, even though on gross basis under article 11. In case any income is brought to tax on account of ALP adjustment, and bearing in mind the fact that such an income will also be relatable to earning the same interest income, it will indeed result in a situation that for revenue of ‘x’ amount earned from India, what will become taxable in India will be an amount more than ‘x’ amount- something which is clearly incongruous. The taxable amount in a tax jurisdiction cannot, under any circumstances, be more than the entire revenue itself in that jurisdiction. In this view of the matter, even an income on account of ALP adjustment for free rendition of services by the Indian representative office to the foreign enterprise itself- even if that be treated as an associated enterprise and a hypothetically independent entity, in the cases of banks where entire interest revenues are taxed on gross basis, is ruled out.

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DATE: December 1, 2020 (Date of pronouncement)
DATE: December 18, 2020 (Date of publication)
AY: 2015-16
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CITATION:
Section 40(a)(i) is a restriction on deductibility of expenses u/s 30 to 38. If the related expenditure is not claimed as a deduction u/s 30 to 38, this disallowance cannot be pressed into service at all. As the assessee is an advertisement agency and advertisements are placed by the assessee on behalf of its clients, there is ordinarily no occasion to claim the costs of advertisements as deduction in computation of its business income. The revenues, in the case of advertisement agencies, consist of only the commission received in respect of the advertisements so placed

Unless a claim for deduction in respect of payments made to Facebook Ireland Limited is made in the computation of business income, there cannot be any occasion for invoking section 40(a)(i) for its disallowance in computation of business income. As we have analyzed earlier also in this order, section 40(a)(i) acts as a restriction on the deductibility of expenses under section 30 to 38, and, as a corollary to this legal position, when the related expenditure is not claimed as deduction under section 30 to 38, this disallowance cannot be pressed into service at all

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