
“The bill would not in any way dilute India’s sovereign right to tax.” “We are keeping the sovereign right of India to tax-absolutely intact,” Sitharman averred the Upper House. “The controversial amendment was made about nine years ago, ignoring a Supreme Court ruling”, she added.
“The idea is, a sovereign government has the right to tax, but to apply it in retrospect has created a lot of discontentment,” she reiterated. “It was a clarificatory amendment against a Supreme Court order brought in by the Congress and they didn’t do any correction to it.”
“The amendment would send a message to global investors that India is a responsible democracy. We take our laws seriously, particularly the tax-related laws. We want to be sure that there is consistency and without consistency in your taxation, obviously, businesses are not going to be able to go forward,” the minister reassured.
On Monday the Rajya Sabha was passed along with two other bills: the Tribunal Reforms Bill, 2021, and the Central Universities (Amendment) Bill, 2021.
The amendment bill adopted its pace on Thursday in the Lok Sabha and passed it the very next day. The move is extensively appreciated as an investor-friendly move that’ll initiate the end of chaotic litigation and arbitration.
The prime motive of this bill is to amend the I-T Act, 1961, and the Finance Act, 2012, which were issued during the tenure of the former finance minister Pranab Mukherjee to bring into light the retrospective tax law, since then it created a stance for all that this amendment is bad for India’s tax regime.