 "Union Finance Minister Arun Jailtey meets the press during Assembly Election at Press Club in Kolkata")
With a revised Mauritius pact in place to check round-tripping, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley (pictured) on Sunday said investors must pay taxes on money earned in India. He also ruled out any depletion of foreign direct investment (FDI) due to imposition of capital gains tax on investments through the island nation.
He said India no longer needs any “tax-incentivised route” to attract foreign investments as Indian economy is now “strong enough” and said there was no “serious apprehension” of investors shifting base to other tax havens due to the re-drawing of the decades-old tax treaty with Mauritius — the biggest source of foreign investments into India.
By checking round-tripping of funds, the amendment would help boost domestic consumption, Jaitley added.
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After toiling for almost a decade to redraw the tax treaty with Mauritius, India will begin imposing capital gains tax on investments in shares through Mauritius from April next onwards. This has been made possible with an amendment to the 34-year-old tax treaty between the two countries.
As markets reacted cautiously to India expanding its crackdown on tax treaties to make it harder for investors to use tax havens as a shelter to avoid levies, Jaitley told PTI, "Eventually markets have to operate on inherent strength of the (Indian) economy."
Stating the Mauritius tax treaty created a "tax-incentivised route" at a time when India was looking at foreign investments to boost the economy, he said the economy has become strong enough and "now those who earn must pay taxes". The original treaty, signed almost a decade before India opened up its economy in 1991, has helped channelise more than a third of the $278 billion (nearly Rs 19 lakh crore) of FDI India received in the past 15 years.
The imposition of taxes has been "done in a phased manner to avoid shock and I don't expect any depletion to FDI because of this. Also eventually, markets have to operate on inherent strength of economy", he said. Minister of State for Finance Jayant Sinha said the treaty revision will bring in a lot of transparency about Mauritius-based entities investing in India.
The redrawn Mauritius treaty will trigger a similar amendment in India’s tax treaty with Singapore. Mauritius and Singapore accounted for $17 billion of the total $29.4 billion India received in FDI during April-December 2015.
"It will help us dramatically in curbing round-tripping because there are two very important aspects to it. One is the capital gains regime... that will be applicable at the same rate as you would get if you were a domestic resident tax payer in India. So, there would be no advantage for anybody coming in through the Mauritius route after 2019.
"There was round-tripping of money for certain that was happening. That, of course, will stop because the capital gains benefit will go away. And the information exchange will be far more thorough," Sinha said.
India had in August 1982 signed the treaty with Mauritius to eliminate double taxation of income and capital gains to encourage mutual trade and investment.
