Assessee, a Mauritius based company, which is engaged in telecasting sports channel called ‘Ten Sports’. It appointed its Indian subsidiary, Taj India as its distributor to distribute subscription supported television programming service solely for exhibition to subscribers in India. Later, by addendum in distribution agreement assessee gave Taj India authority to conclude contracts in its name. Assessing Officer held that assessee had a dependent agent PE in India within meaning of article 5.4(i) of DTAA on ground that Taj India had authority to conclude contracts in name of assessee. On appeal the Tribunal held that in order to invoke provisions of article 5(4)(i), two conditions are required to be satisfied which are that person in contracting state has concluded contract and habitually exercised authority to conclude contract. Since Assessing Officer merely relied on clause replaced by addendum in distribution agreement and failed to establish that Taj India habitually exercised authority to conclude contracts on behalf of assessee, in such case Taj India could not be said to be dependent agent PE of assessee under article 5(4) of DTAA and distribution income of assessee could not be taxed in India. As regards advertising sales agent to sell commercial advertisement time to prospective advertisers in India, since Indian subsidiary was remunerated at ALP by assessee, no further profit/income could be said to be attributable to assessee for purpose of taxation in India. Transponder fee and uplinking charges to US based company for providing facilities of telecasting channels of assessee in India, since said payment was not made for right to use any industrial, commercial or scientific equipment, payment in question would not fall within ambit of royalty used in para 3 of article 12 of India-USA DTAA. (AY. 2012-13)
Taj TV Ltd. v. ACIT (2022) 194 ITD 547 (Mum.)(Trib.)
S. 9(1)(i) : Income deemed to accrue or arise in India-Business connection-Dependent Agency Permanent Agency-Indian subsidiary to distribute subscription supported television programming service to Indian subscribers-Distribution income cannot be taxed in India-Indian subsidiary was remunerated at ALP by assessee, no further profit/income could be said to be attributable to assessee for purpose of taxation in India-transponder fee and uplinking charges to US based company for providing facilities of telecasting channels of assessee in India-Not royalty-DTAA-India-Mauritius-India-USA. [S. 9(1)(vi), 195, Art. 5(4), 12]