India is believed to have challenged in a court in The Hague an arbitration tribunal verdict that overturned its demand for Rs 10,247 crore in back taxes from Cairn Energy Plc -- the second time in three months that it has refused to accept an international award against retrospective tax.
The bill to nullify retrospective taxation offers a fair solution within the framework of Indian law and Parliamentary sovereignty to companies which have been subjected to such demands, Finance Secretary T V Somanathan said on Thursday. Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman introduced 'The Taxation Laws (Amendment) Bill, 2021' in the Lok Sabha that seeks to withdraw tax demands made using a 2012 retrospective legislation to tax the indirect transfer of Indian assets. The Bill provides for the withdrawal of tax demand made on "indirect transfer of Indian assets if the transaction was undertaken before May 28, 2012 (i.e. the day the retrospective tax legislation came into being)."
If General Asim Munir, Pakistan's new army chief, wants to help defuse the current polarised atmosphere and shepherd civilian politicians towards negotiations on an acceptable date for elections, he may need to distance himself from any perception of needless hostility to Imran Khan, explains Rana Banerji, who headed the Pakistan desk at RA&W, India's external intelligence agency.
Faced with prospect of its assets across the globe being seized just like Pakistan and Venezuela, the government decided to scrap retrospective taxation but the international embarrassment could have been avoided had 'attached' shares of Britain's Cairn Energy Plc not been sold, according to tax and legal experts. On Thursday, the government introduced a Bill in Parliament to scrap the tax rule that gave the tax department power to go 50 years back and slap capital gains levies wherever ownership had changed hands overseas but business assets were in India. The 2012 legislation was used to levy a cumulative of Rs 1.10 lakh crore of tax on 17 entities, including UK telecom giant Vodafone, but substantial punitive action was taken only in the case of Cairn.
Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Thursday reiterated that an international arbitration ruling on India's sovereign right to taxation sets the wrong precedent, but said the government is looking at how best it can sort out the issue arising out of New Delhi being ordered to return $1.2 billion plus interest and cost to UK's Cairn Energy Plc. The government, which participated in an international arbitration brought by the Scottish firm against being taxed retrospectively, has appealed against The Hague based tribunal's ruling asking the government to return the value of shares expropriated and liquidated, tax refunds withheld and dividend seized to recover a wrongly levied retroactive tax demand.
The court questioned the 'authenticity of the document' attached with the PIL and the manner in which the papers were procured.
USL board said its second forensic audit by EY has revealed fund diversion worth Rs 1,225 cr to Mallya companies.
UK's Cairn Energy Plc has offered to forego $500 million and invest that amount in any oil and gas or renewable energy project identified by the Indian government if New Delhi agrees to honour an international arbitration award and returns the value of loss it incurred because of being taxed retrospectively, sources said. The Scottish firm invested in the oil and gas sector in India in 1994 and a decade later it made a huge oil discovery in Rajasthan. In 2006-07, it listed its Indian assets on the BSE. Five years after that the government passed a retroactive tax law and billed Cairn Rs 10,247 crore plus interest and penalty for the reorganisation tied to the flotation.
Amid Trump's expected action against employment visas, India's bellwether IT firms reveal they have been preparing for this eventuality for years.
The incident has been widely reported in the British media along with pictures, which show the 28-year-old being pushed away by the Alfie actor who was leaving a celebrity dinner party when the incident occurred.
Given how everything has played out, Mehul Choksi, now 62, achieved all that he wanted but for all the wrong reasons, says Pavan Lall.
When Bastian Obermayer and Frederik Obermaier shone a light on the Pandora's Box that became famous as the Panama Papers, even they didn't know how it would shake up the murky world of finance, indeed the world itself.
'In both cases, there is a sneering disregard for the established processes of law while dealing with what the American president and the junior Indian minister regard as unpardonable behaviour,' notes Amulya Ganguli.
Addressing a press conference, farmer leader Darshan Pal Singh said their proposed parade will be called "Kisan Parade" and it will be be held after the Republic Day parade.
A three-member NCLAT bench set aside an earlier order passed by the Kolkata bench of the NCLT and asked the interim resolution professional (IRP) to handover all the assets and records of the company to its board.
Britain's longest serving Indian-origin Labour MP Keith Vaz on Tuesday resigned from his post as chair of the influential House of Commons Home Affairs Select Committee in the wake of being embroiled in a sex scandal.
In a multi-pronged attack on the government, Congress chief Rahul Gandhi and Surjewala alleged that it was managing headlines to deflect attention from issues such as the death of 39 Indians in captivity in Iraq.
Finance secretary R S Gujral too is believed to have met top Vodafone officials in Mumbai last month.
Arriving in New Delhi within days of exposure of the Rs 3,600-crore VVIP helicopters scam involving Anglo-Italian firm AgustaWestland, British Prime Minister David Cameron is likely to be pressed for more information in this regard during his meetings with the leadership on Tuesday.
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The government is likely to file an appeal against the Cairn arbitration award contesting its sovereign rights to tax, sources said.
43-year-old Pankesh Patel, managing director of a UK firm that acts as a sales agent for companies in law enforcement and military products industries, and two more Britons --David Painter (56) and Lee Wares (43)-- were among 22 people arrested, the US Department of Justice said. Wares is the chairman and director of a British company that markets armoured vehicles.
New rules are expected to make it tougher for British companies wanting to bring in foreign professionals from outside the EU, including countries like India
The government may be waiting for the outcome of an arbitration initiated against its levy of Rs 10,247 crore retrospective tax on UK's Cairn Energy Plc before deciding on appealing against losing a tax case against Vodafone Group, sources said. An international arbitral tribunal is expected to give a decree within next few days on Cairn Energy Plc's challenge to the Indian government seeking Rs 10,247 crore in retrospective taxes. If the arbitration award in the Cairn cases goes against India, the government has to pay the British firm over Rs 7,600 crore to reverse the dividend and tax refund it had ceased and shares it sold to recover part of the tax demand.
The government on Thursday brought a bill in the Lok Sabha to withdraw all back tax demands on companies such as Cairn Energy and Vodafone and said it will refund the money collected to enforce such levies.
Finance ministry is understood to have reservations on the ownership of minority stakeholders in Hutchison-Essar and is likely to raise the issue at the FIPB meeting.
The term, 'pro-Pakistani', is helpful for the BJP to depict its opponents as anti-nationals while the sedition law is handy for locking up or harassing the government's critics, points out Amulya Ganguli.
Complicated social phenomena behind it, says Ajit Balakrishnan.
Diageo, which had acquired Mallya's United Spirits nearly six years ago, is claiming $40 million paid to the liquor tycoon as part of an alleged breach of agreement.
As global economies contract because of the Covid-19 pandemic, the focus of most of the India Inc has now moved back to the home market where demand is expected to pick substantially from the coming festival season.
The Singapore high court has put a freeze on deposits of $ 6.122 million following Enforcement Directorate's request on the ground that the money was "proceeds of crime" illegally siphoned off by Nirav Modi from the Punjab National Bank.
The USS John Paul Jones acted like a dog marking the lamp post, observes Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar.
Judge Rajasekhar also imposed a fine of Rs 3,000 each on the crew members comprising 12 Indians, three Ukranians, six British and 14 Estonian nationals.
Traders have all but given up attempting to predict where the new-year rout will end
The court had on January 4 declared Mallya a proclaimed offender for evading summons in a FERA violation case after noting that he failed to appear before it despite repeated summonses.
The 39-year-old appeared at Italy's Sanremo festival in March, where he sang a duet with Bologna coach Sinisa Mihajlovic and said he would like to try acting.
What the UK is getting out of the Serum Institute is what India is losing. And the responsibility of the Indian State ought to have been to dictate where Serum Institute's vaccine doses should go, argues Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar.
The parliamentary committee on IT has recently been in the news for asking global representatives of Twitter, Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram to present their views on misuse of social media platforms and its impact on citizens.
A day after terminating the tainted VVIP helicopter deal with AugustaWestland, the defence ministry has set in motion the process of encashing the bank guarantee of nearly Rs 1,700 crore furnished by the Anglo-Italian firm.
Officials said the agency had issued a notice to Karti to present himself in person or through an authorised representative and submit personal financial documents and those related to a firm this week.
Prasad said the probe by the CBI will determine whether Cambridge Analytica violated the Information Technology Act, 2000 and the Indian Penal Code.
