Monday, January 20, 2014

LO promoting sales of foreign-co. is taxable; incentivising sales force is sales promotional deed, held ITAT

Facts:
1)    The assessee, M/s Brown & Sharpe Inc. incorporated in USA,had started a LO in India for which permission of the RBI was taken.
2)    The Assessing Officer held that since LO was promoting sales of assessee’s product, income attributable to LO’s activities was taxable in India.

The Tribunal held in favour of revenue as under:
1)  The assessee-company was registered with the Registrar of Companies in India for carrying on the business. The LO, apart from having Chief Representative Officer and other staff, was also having a technical expert;
2)  The employees of LO were promoting the sales of the goods of the assessee-company as per service conditions.There was a sales incentive plan by which employees were provided the incentive for achieving the sales target and the performance of the employees was being judged by the orders secured by the assessee-company;
3)  All these activities established that the LO of the assessee was promoting the sales of the assessee-company in India and, therefore, the revenue was fully justified in holding that the income attributable to LO was taxable in India;
4)  The liaison office received more amount than the expenses actually incurred by it. Thus,the sum received by it over and above the expenses actually incurred, year after year, were rightly treated as income by revenue. - Brown & Sharpe Inc. v. ACIT (2014) 41 taxmann.com 345 (Delhi - Trib.)