The assessee, a UK-based company, filed an application under section 197 seeking a ‘NIL’ tax withholding certificate regarding subscription fees received from Indian distributors. The Assessing Officer assumed jurisdiction to prescribe a 15 per cent tax withholding rate by relying on an old assessment order for AY 1999-2000, which had already been set aside by the Tribunal in the case of the assessee’s group entity. On writ, the Hon\u2019ble High Court found and held that the Tribunal, being the last fact-finding authority, had already recorded a clear finding in the group company’s case (Thomson Reuters) that such distribution fees do not amount to royalty. Since no distinguishing features or new facts were brought on record by the revenue, the competent authority cannot disregard judicial discipline to take a contrary view based on conjectures and surmises. Accordingly, the petition was allowed, and the AO was directed to issue a NIL rate certificate. (AY. 2026-27)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
S. 197: Deduction at source-Certificate for lower rate-Royalty-Subscription Fee-Distribution fees for subscription-based information and software products-Tribunal finding in group entity’s case under identical facts held receipts were not royalty-Assessing Officer cannot disregard precedent based on conjectures-Impugned withholding certificate set aside and NIL rate certificate directed-DTAA-India-UK. [S. 9(1)(vi), 197, Art. 7, 13, Art. 226]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-64450","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-income-tax-act"],"acf":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9S2Rw-gLw","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/itatonline.org\/digest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64450","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/itatonline.org\/digest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/itatonline.org\/digest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itatonline.org\/digest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itatonline.org\/digest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=64450"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/itatonline.org\/digest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64450\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":64451,"href":"https:\/\/itatonline.org\/digest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64450\/revisions\/64451"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/itatonline.org\/digest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=64450"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itatonline.org\/digest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=64450"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itatonline.org\/digest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=64450"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}