Daily Mains Practice Questions 27-04-2023

KEY POINTS

·        The apex court held that any ALP determined outside the purview of relevant transfer pricing (TP) provisions can be considered as ‘perverse’ and may be considered as a substantial question of law.

·        The Supreme Court ruling shall have far-reaching implications for taxpayers in India, including on a large number of cases covered by High Court rulings, that had relied on the Karnataka HC ruling.

·        On appeal, there is also likelihood of HCs remanding such matters to the ITAT for adjudication, instead of passing a speaking order on merits.

·        Following this ruling, the Karnataka HC as well as some other HCs dismissed a plethora of TP appeals on the grounds that substantial question of law did not arise in those cases.

·        Tax disputes arising out of these regulations have reached Indian courts and several significant decisions have been pronounced to clarify and amplify requirements from MNCs for their Indian operations.

·        Going forward, it may be useful for taxpayers to proactively strategise at the time of entering into an international transaction or latest, when they receive an adverse TP order, on whether they should focus on the domestic litigation route or also evaluate alternative dispute resolution mechanisms such as Mutual Agreement Procedure and Advance Pricing Agreement.

KEY POINTS

·        A series of terror attacks, from Mumbai to Pathankot and Pulwama, have run a veto over any Indian initiative to restart dialogue.

·        As a result, the optics are grim for the two land neighbours: no political contact at any level, no trade, no direct travel links by air, road or rail, and no High Commissioners in each other’s countries.

·        However, as the book records, no matter how much India-Pakistan ties rupture, the long arc of the relationship always veers towards engagement.

·        The two sides have also reportedly discussed a sequence of responses that would lead back to quasi-normalcy-restoration of statehood and elections in J&K, the reappointment of High Commissioners and the restoration of visas and people-to-people ties.

·        Article 370, which was always a temporary provision, and diluted over the decades, was never recognised by Pakistan.

·        More than the legal moves (that have changed little on the ground), is the focus on the means adopted to wrought those moves: unjust arrests and a continuing security crackdown on politicians and civil society,

·        The truth is that despite the precariousness of the situation within J&K, the LoC has been more or less stable for more than half a century.

KEY POINTS

·        The idea of having flexible working hours in factories, with workers being ‘free to choose’ between working for eight or 12 hours in a day, would have actually worked to the disadvantage of workers, particularly women.

·        There can be no humanitarian or economic case for pushing a worker beyond his or her physical or mental limits, which is the rationale for having an eight-hour day of work or a 48-hour working week.

·        Labour productivity is best raised by employing the optimum number of workers and skilling them by investing in technology.

·        Inimical working conditions are more a recipe for industrial unrest than for raising productivity.

·        The triggers were dissimilar in each case, but the root cause was probably the same  pent-up resentment arising from poor conditions of work.

·        The situation has been made worse by the absence of legitimate unions in workplaces these days, especially in the electronics industry, to amicably resolve differences.

·        Labour reforms, broadly speaking, are a step in the right direction. This includes the Centre’s move to encapsulate 29 earlier labour laws into four codes  for wages, industrial relations, occupational health and safety, and social security  in an effort to ease compliance and doing business.