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Introduction On May 12, 2015, the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion, Ministry of Commerce and Industry, Government of India (the “DIPP”) issued the consolidated foreign direct investment policy circular of 2015 (the “FDI Policy 2015”). The circular on consolidated foreign direct investment policy is updated by the DIPP every year and captures all the…

Background Minimum Alternate Tax (“MAT”) is a tax levied under the Income-tax Act, 1961 (“IT Act”) on the book profit of a company where the overall tax paid by the company is less than 18.5% of the book profit.  Generally speaking, in the case of non-resident entities who do not have a permanent establishment in…

In his budget speech on February 28, 2015, the Finance Minister (“FM”) made it clear that black (unaccounted) money was eating into the Indian economy and this problem would have to be tackled forcefully.  While the FM acknowledged that there were limitations under the Income-tax Act, 1961 (the “IT Act”) to deal with black money,…

Introduction On March 24, 2015, the Hon’ble Supreme Court of India (the “SC”) pronounced its judgment on constitutional validity of Sections 66A, 69A and 79 of the Information Technology Act, 2000 (the “IT Act”) and the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines) Rules, 2011 (the “Intermediary Rules”). The SC declared Section 66A of the IT Act to…

Introduction On December 26, 2014, the President of India promulgated the Insurance Laws (Amendment) Ordinance, 2014 (the “Ordinance”) to amend the Insurance Act, 1938 (the “Act”), the General Insurance Business (Nationalisation) Act, 1972, and the Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority Act, 1999. On March 12, 2015, the Rajya Sabha (the upper house of the Parliament)…

India’s Union Budget (“Budget”) was announced on February 28, 2015, and the Finance Bill, 2015 (the “Finance Bill”) was tabled in Parliament. Most of the income tax proposals in the Finance Bill will be effective from the financial year commencing on April 1, 2015, unless specified otherwise. Announced in the backdrop of high expectations, the…

Introduction The Arbitration and Conciliation Act, 1996 (the “Act”), was enacted by the Parliament of India to consolidate and amend the law relating to domestic arbitration and enforcement of foreign awards. One of the main objectives of the Act was to minimise the supervisory role of courts in the arbitration process.  However, in our view,…

This update discusses certain key changes to India’s foreign exchange regulations implemented in the past few weeks Liberalization of the limit under the Liberalized Remittance Scheme (“LRS”) In the bi-monthly monetary policy statement released on February 3, 2015, the Reserve Bank of India (the “RBI”) has increased the limit on remittance of foreign exchange for…