The High Court of India recently issued a ruling on the taxation of certain payments where there was a conflict of the provisions of India's domestic tax law and provisions under relevant tax treaties. In this particular case, the court ruled that the domestic law did override treaty provisions.
The matter at hand, was an appeal by a taxpayer concerning withholding tax on payments to non-resident telecom operators (NTO). The payment to the NTOs were for the provision of bandwidth and interconnec…