2016 (8) TMI 166 - DELHI HIGH COURT

TDS u/s 195 - withholding of tax - payments made/ to be made to Steria France under the Management Services Agreement - whether the payment made by Steria (India) for the management services provided by Steria France will not be taxable in India in the hands of Steria France as per the provisions of the DTAA entered into between India and France? - Held that:- AAR appears to have failed to notice that the wording of Clause 7 of the Protocol makes it self-operational. It is not in dispute that the IndiaFrance DTAA was itself notified by the Central Government by issuing a notification under Section 90 of the Act. It is also not in dispute the separate Protocol signed between India and France simultaneously forms an integral part of the Convention itself. The preamble in the Protocol, which states “the undersigned have agreed on the following provisions which shall form an integral part of the Convention”, makes this position clear. Once the DTAA has itself been notified, and contains the Protocol including para 7 thereof, there is no need for the Protocol itself to be separately notified or for the beneficial provisions in some other Convention between India and another OECD country to be separately notified to form part of the IndoFrance DTAA.

The Court is, therefore, unable to agree with the conclusion of the AAR that the Clause 7 of the Protocol, which forms part of the DTAA between India and France, does not automatically become applicable and that there has to be a separate notification incorporating the beneficial provisions of the DTAA between India and UK as forming part of the India- France DTAA.

What is being provided by Steria France to the Petitioner in terms of the Management Services Agreement is managerial services. It is plain that once the expression 'managerial services' is outside the ambit of ‘fee for technical services’, then the question of the Petitioner having to deduct tax at source from payment for the managerial services, would not arise. It is, therefore, not necessary for the Court to further examine the second part of the definition, viz., whether any of the services envisaged under Article 13(4) of the Indo-UK DTAA are “made available” to the Petitioner by the DTAA with France.

As regards the nature of the service being provided under the Management Services Agreement, again the Court is unable to find any case made out by the Revenue before the AAR that what was provided was anything other than the managerial service which in any event stands excluded in the definition of the “fees for technical services” under the IndoUK DTAA. Consequently, this question also does not survive for consideration.

Thus the payment made by the Petitioner to Steria France for the managerial services provided by the latter cannot be taxed as fee for technical services and are not liable to withholding of tax under Section 195 of the Act. - Decided in favour of assessee