Important ruling on the taxation of foreign companies carrying calls abroad

The authority for advance rulings in an application filed under section 245Q(1) of the income tax act, 1961 by the Cable & Wireless Networks India Private Limited has held that since, (a) the payments made by the applicant to its foreign partner are in the nature of business profits; (b) in the absence of there being any permanent establishment of the its foreign partner in India this kind of income is not taxable here. The case concerned the supply of international long distance and domestic long distance telecommunication service’s, where the applicant would provide the Indian leg of the service by using its own network and equipments and network of other domestic operators and the international leg of the service would be provided by its foreign partner using its foreign architecture. The voice data is carried by the applicant in India on its own network and delivered to its foreign partner at Marseilles in France from where the latter carries it to Alpharetta, USA. In India leg of the service there is no involvement of the network or equipment of C&W Uk. TCS pays one time charge for the installation and recurring charges for the connectivity charges.