Taxman at the Door

An ignorant yet aggressive tax system has e-commerce companies looking for succour.

By GOUTAM DAS

An e-commerce marketplace is a platform that connects vendors with buyers; the companies don’t own the products. They pay a service tax on the commission they make to the Central government, while the vendor selling the goods pays a VAT to the state government. However, in 2014, the Karnataka government asked Amazon India to pay VAT It couldn’t have been a trip M.K. Pallai would compare and book. His nightmare began on the night of January 8, a Friday. He was served a two-page arrest warrant at 10 PM, taken to a police station and locked up. By the time he was released on bail, Pallai, the Vice President of Finance at MakeMyTrip.com, had spent three nights in Delhi’s Tihar Jail. The issue was a service tax evasion investigation Pallai’s employer was…

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Business Today (Digital) - 1 Issue, February 28, 2016

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