Good sense, finally

Govt wasted nine years in trying to defend the indefensible retro tax

The government has introduced the Taxation Laws (Amendment) Bill, 2021, which seeks to amend the Income-tax Act of 1961 and the Finance Act of 2012 effectively to reduce the chances of retrospective tax demands by the authorities. This is a welcome act and should have been done much earlier. The 2012 Union Budget, of course, had introduced the notorious retrospective tax clause that allowed the income-tax authorities to try and claw back taxes on past transactions, even if the transactions were carried out abroad, if the transaction involved capital gains on “underlying assets” that might be considered to be located