As the name suggests, “Consignment Taxes” imply taxes on consignment. In India these are also colloquially understood as taxes on ‘stock-transfer' of goods which is how most consignment of goods are effected in the country. These essentially relate to movement of goods from one territory...

In an earlier article titled as ‘Service Tax on Lawyers: A levy short lived?' [Excise and Customs Reporter Vol. 191(4), pp. 55SF-60SF] I had an occasion to point out that the levy of service tax on individual lawyers was an experiment out of the various experiments conducted by the Government...

The history of ever expanding horizon of service tax law in India has extensive sub-chapters of its own. The levy being unique and unprecedented in the country, the Finance Act, 1994 has made a number of experiments for the levy and collection of service tax from various sectors. Sometimes owing...

Levy of Service Tax under the positive list regime was fraught with constitutional and legal challenges; chief amongst those being the contours and width of the taxable service in question. An appraisal of the disputes surrounding the construction of IPR service positions it as a quintessential...

While the power of the legislature to levy tax on a particular subject-matter is paramount, subject only to the constitutional limitations, there are a few subjects which by their intrinsic nature have eluded their eligibility to tax. Lotteries organised by the various States of India, have...

The Government of India submitted the ‘Direct Taxes Code' Bill, 2010 the Parliament in August, 2010. The Code, expected to come into force from the next financial year i.e. 1st April 2012, is not just a regular amendment but replaces all the existing direct tax laws in India. The drafters have...

The unbridled intent to maximize the return for shareholders has earned an enviable place for the tax-planning fraternity in corporate structuring deliberations. More often than not, elevating the trend akin to an axiomatic proposition, cross-border transactions are tested for tax-efficiency...

An earlier version of this paper can be found at http://ssrn.com/abstract=1997835This author in the article titled as ‘Taxability of Corporate Gift of Shares' had examined the ruling of AAR in Dana Corporation, In Re and others. In those rulings the AAR had inter alia held that no capital...

'Every man is entitled if he can to order his affairs so that the tax attaching under the appropriate Acts is less than it otherwise would be.' These words of Lord Tomlin in Duke of Westminster can be attributed as a pivotal ground for various amendments in the fiscal laws as the ingenuity of...