Akhilesh Ranjan Committee on Taxation of E-Commerce
Q. Akhilesh Ranjan Committee was appointed for- Published on 23 Mar 16a. E-Commerce taxation
b. FCI procurement
c. Fiscal Discipline
d. Poverty Line measurements
ANSWER: E-Commerce taxation
- A Committee on Taxation of e-commerce was constituted by the Central Board of Direct Taxes to examine the business models for e-commerce, identify the direct tax issues in relation to e-commerce transactions and suggest an approach to deal with these issues.
- The Committee included officers of the CBDT, representatives from the industry, the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India and tax experts. The 8-member committee was headed by Akhilesh Ranjan, Joint Secretary (FT&TR-I), CBDT, Department of Revenue, Ministry of Finance.
- The committee has recommended a 6-8 per cent tax on several online services such as online advertising, cloud computing, website-hosting, digital platforms for sale of goods and services or download of software and applications, provided by a company not resident in India.
- Committee recommended that payments of over Rs.1 lakh made by a resident individual or company to a non-resident enterprise will be covered by this levy.
- The report was submitted to Finance Minister prior to the Budget, based on which he proposed a fee of 6 per cent to be levied only on online advertising and restricted to B2B transactions.
- Though the Budget proposal is to apply this levy currently only on online advertisements, more categories of digital goods and services may be added later.
