ITES can’t be classified into BPO and KPO services; Cos providing ‘high end’ and ‘low end services’ not comparable

The Tribunal held as under:

1)  Classification of ITES into low-end BPO services and high-end KPO services for comparability analysis would not be fair and proper;

2)  The companies providing mainly high-end services by using specialized knowledge and domain expertise couldn’t be considered as comparable for assessee-company, which was engaged in providing low end back office support services (like voice or data processing services) to its AE;

3)  Therefore, these entities (i.e. companies providing high end services) could not be taken as comparable to the assessee-company which was mainly involved in providing low-end services. - Maersk Global Centres (India) (P.) Ltd. v. ACIT [2014] 43 taxmann.com 100 (Mumbai - Trib.) (SB)

3)