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Abstract
On October 5, 2015, the OECD released its final reports under the base erosion and profit shifting (BEPS) project, which were presented to the G20 finance ministers on October 8 2015. BEPS Action 6 identifies tax treaty abuse and, in particular, treaty shopping, as one of the most significant sources of BEPS concerns. Pritin Kumar, Vishal Palwe and Heta Jhaveri of Deloitte provide an update on action to counter treaty abuse, from an Indian perspective. Over the past few years, the Indian government has been working to tighten the rules in the Indian tax law for granting tax treaty benefits. The government has introduced a requirement for non-residents to furnish a tax residency certificate, along with a self-declaration confirming certain basic information, as a minimum threshold to claim tax treaty benefits. The roll-out of the proposals in the final report under BEPS Action 6 coincides with India's efforts to curb tax treaty shopping. India has been including an anti-abuse rule in its recent tax treaties, but incorporating such a provision in older treaties is likely to take time - one case in point has been India's unsuccessful efforts to renegotiate the tax treaty with Mauritius to include a provision that would deny tax treaty benefits to multinational enterprises that set up conduit companies in Mauritius primarily to take advantage of the capital gains exemption available under the treaty.