Finance ministry advocates monetary limit for invoking GAAR

29 Jun 2012 Evaluate

In its move to allay concerns over contentious taxation issues, the Finance Ministry in its draft guidelines issued on June 28, 2012, put forward a proposal to set a monetary limit for invoking the controversial General Anti-Tax Avoidance Rules (GAAR). The draft guidelines cited that those deals which are over a prescribed limit should be covered by GAAR provisions however, it remained silent on any specific monetary limit.

The recent draft guidelines also talked about invoking GAAR provisions only in cases where FIIs choose to take the benefit of double tax avoidance treaties, but would not in any case be invoked in the case of the non-resident investors of the FII. Highlighting that the provisions will apply only to the income arising to taxpayers on or after April 1, 2013, the draft guidelines also advocated the idea of setting up a three-member Approving Panel to decide whether a particular case would attract the provisions of the GAAR.

Former Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee, who is now seen by many as the frontrunner in the race of becoming President of India, in his Union Budget 2012-13 had proposed the GAAR provisions to curtail tax evasion. The provisions had invoked sharp criticism from the foreign and domestic investors, following which the government constituted a high-level committee to look into their concerns.

According to some estimates Indian markets had lost around Rs 1 lakh crore or about $20 billion worth of investments from the overseas funds and ultra-rich foreign individuals over the three month period between March and May on new taxation proposals and the government's recent white paper on Black Money. General Anti-Avoidance Rule (GAAR) remained the buzzword over last three months in the financial circles and though not many knew about the nitty-gritties of it, most witnessed how talks surrounding its implementation from April 1, 2012 rattled foreign institutional investors (FII) which in turn triggered a free-fall off sorts in Indian stock markets.

A committee headed by Director General of Income Tax (international taxation), looked into the concerns of the investors and came out with draft guidelines to seek comments of the stakeholders. Proposing time limits for completion of various actions under the GAAR, the draft also has examples for what would be deemed as permissible and impermissible arrangement.

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