| COURT: | ITAT Mumbai |
| CORAM: | Pavan Kumar Gadale (JM), Pramod Kumar (VP) |
| SECTION(S): | Article 11, Article 7, India-Germany DTAA |
| GENRE: | International Tax |
| CATCH WORDS: | India-Germany DTAA |
| COUNSEL: | Nitesh Joshi, P.J. Pardiwalla |
| DATE: | December 4, 2020 (Date of pronouncement) |
| DATE: | December 18, 2020 (Date of publication) |
| AY: | 2014-15 |
| FILE: | Click here to view full post with file download link |
| 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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