Interest on Continuing Debit Balance– Notional or Real!

Introduction

Over the years since the introduction of the Indian Transfer pricing regulations, the transfer pricing audits based on the experience and learnings gained have seen numerous interpretations of the provisions, thereby leading to transfer pricing adjustments. The Indian transfer pricing litigation scenario has seen the trend of adjustments shifting from mere dispute on comparable companies to larger issues such as location savings, management cross charges, intangibles, share valuations, business restructuring, etc.

One such issue being the continuing debit balance in the financials of multinational companies(MNC). Globally due to the financial exigencies, the MNCs often commercially require to defer the payables / receivables. The continuing debit balance / receivables have been treated by the tax authorities as an international transaction and thereby sought to impute arm's length interest on receivables outstanding from the associated enterprise (AE) that were not realized within the credit period.

The Section 92B of the Indian transfer pricing regulations provides the coverage of the transactions that could be treated as international transaction. Vide Finance Act 2012, a clarificatory Explanation was inserted with retrospective effect from 1 April 2002. By virtue of the said Explanation, inter alia the expression 'international transaction' included capital financing such as any type of long-term or short-term borrowing, lending or guarantee, purchase or sale of marketable securities or any type o

Changes in the Finance Bill 2016 as passed by the Lok Sabha

On May 5, 2016, the Lok Sabha passed the Finance Bill, 2016. The Bill which was presented originally in the Lok Sabha on February 29, 2016 has not been passed in its original shape. Various changes have been made in the Bill. New amendments have been proposed. Some earlier proposed amendments have been removed, so on and so forth. A snippet of some changes made in the Finance Bill, 2016 as passed by the Lok Sabha viz-a-viz the Finance Bill, 2016 presented originally in the Lok Sabha are presented hereunder.

1. The Finance Bill, 2016 as passed by the Lok Sabha inserted a new clause to provide that unlisted shares of company would be treated as short-term capital asset if it is held for a period of 24 months or less immediately preceding the date of its transfer.

2. The Finance Bill, 2016 proposed a new section 80-IAC to provide 100 percent deduction for 3 assessment years to an ‘eligible Start-up’. The ‘eligible start-up’ is defined to mean a ‘company’ engaged in an eligible business. The Finance Bill, 2016 as passed by the Lok Sabha extends the definition of ‘eligible start-up’ to include ‘LLP’.

3. The Finance Bill, 2016 had proposed an additional tax of 10% if amount of dividend received by a taxpayer exceeds Rs. 10 Lakhs. The Finance Bill, 2016 as passed by the Lok Sabha provided that aggregate amount of dividend (i.e., dividend paid or declared or distributed by one or more domestic companies) shall be considered for the limit of Rs.10 lakhs.

4. The Finance Bill, 2016 proposed that every seller of a motor vehicle shall collect TCS at the rate of 1% of value of motor car if such value exceeds ten lakh rupees. Such tax was proposed to be collected from the buyer under section 206C at the time of debiting the amount receivable or at the time of receipt, whichever happened earlier. The Finance Bill, 2016 as passed by the Lok Sabha provides that tax shall be collected under Section 206C only at the time of receipt of consideration.

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