The Central Board of Direct Taxes (for brevity ‘CBDT’) has released a paper for public consultation on the proposals pertaining to the amendment of rules which deal with profit attribution to Permeant Establishment (for brevity ‘PE’). The current rule does not lay down a universal approach for determination of profits attributable to PE, leaving to the discretion of Assessing Officer a wide power for such attribution. This has led to multiple rounds of litigations both by tax payer and revenue. The Courts also held in different matters, different profit attributions making this more complicated. Further, the tax payer is also burdened in absence of a concrete mechanism, which leads to tax uncertainty. Hence, the CBDT thought in the best interests of tax payers and to achieve a universality in attributions of profits to PE, brought out a paper for public consultation dealing with the amendments to such rules. The paper was published on 18^th April 2019 and CBDT has provided a window of 30 days for providing the comments on the proposed amendments. Such comments can be mailed to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. In this write up, we have tried to concisely capture the key contents in the paper, so that reader can go through this write up and make his suggestions to the proposed amendments.

Read more: Summary of Proposal for Amendment of Rule for Profit Attribution to Permanent Establishment

In our last article, we have analyzed the legal provisions relating to interest payable under Goods & Services Tax (for brevity ‘GST’) laws towards delay in remittance of tax. Taking into consideration, the well established legal principle that interest is compensatory in nature and is required to be payable only when there is a loss to revenue for delayed remittance of tax, we have expressed our opinion that interest payable under GST law is on net liability after adjustment of input tax credit as against the view expressed by Principal Commissioner, Hyderabad vide his standing Order No. 01/2019 dated 04.02.2019. In the meantime, the Telangana and Andhra Pradesh High Court, in the case of M/s Megha Engineering and Infrastructures Limited vs CCT[1], has expressed that interest is payable gross tax liability. In this article, we will now analyze the reasons for such conclusion by Honorable High Court and the probable legal proposition that can be reconceived.

Read more: Interest Payable Under Gst - Time To Reconceive The Legal Proposition

General Data Protection Regulations or GDPR is the new Privacy Protection Regulation adopted on 27th April 2016 by the European Union in replacement of the earlier Data Protection Regime. The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is a legal framework that sets guidelines for the collection and processing of personal information of individuals within the European Union (EU). The GDPR sets out the principles for data management and the rights of the individual, while also imposing fines that can be revenue-based. The new Data Protection Act 2018 replaces the 1998 Data Protection Act.

The nucleus of the GDPR is to protect the personal data and  privacy  of all citizens  in the EU. It makes companies accountable for the data it collect, store, analyse and use. The development will not only change the business landscape in the EU but also influence global markets and multinationals. 

These privacy regulations which come with restrictions on non-transferability of EU data to non-compliant countries make it highly relevant for countries outside EU also as it could make or mar the data processing industry.

What distinguishes GDPR from the earlier regulations is the high level of penalties envisaged under the regulation which may go upto Euro 20 million (approximately Rs 140 crores) or 4% of global turnover of a company and will be applicable even for Non EU based companies. 

Read more: General Data Protection Regulations

What is a Derivative? 

A Derivative is a (financial) security or instrument, the value of which depends on underlying asset or group of assets or a benchmark.   It is a contract between two or more parties, and its price is determined by fluctuations in the underlying asset.  Examples of underlying assets in case of derivatives are shares /stocks, bonds, indexes, currencies, interest rates and commodities. 

Derivatives are most commonly used to hedge the risk of abnormal fluctuations, be it price of share or interest rate or exchange rates of currencies. At the same time, derivatives are also used as a speculation tool where the speculators engage in trading them with an objective to gain (arbitrage) from such abnormal fluctuations.  Most commonly used derivative contracts as Forward Contracts, Exchange Traded Futures and Options (in stocks and currencies), Interest Rate Swaps, Currency Swaps, etc.

Read more: Derivatives Under Fema