Flagging some key concerns that “dampened” the investment climate in India, Nancy J Powell, who recently took over as US Ambassador to India, said some amendments made in the Direct Taxes Code (DTC) Bill by Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee was one of them.
Powell, interacting with a group of entrepreneurs, industry captains and others here, was referring to the latest amendments made in the Finance Bill reiterating India’s right to tax incomes from offshore share transactions insofar the gains were attributable to activities in India in the wake of the Supreme Court judgment in the Vodafone case.
On her first visit to Chennai after resuming office in New Delhi, Powell at the meeting, organised under the auspices of the Indo-American Chamber of Commerce, said “several recent policy decisions caused significant concern” vis-à-vis bilateral trade and investment between the two countries.
About Mukherjee’s budgetary measure, which in the above instance will take retrospective effect from April 1, 1962, Powell termed it as “inclusion of retroactive tax provisions in the Finance Bill”.
Even as Powell was gung-ho about the overall Indo-US economic partnership deepening over the years with India leaping to be the “13th largest trading partner” of the US in just a decade, US foreign direct investments (FDI) in India peaking to $3 billion.
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