A host of international business associations from a wide range of India’s major trading partner and investment partner countries have urged the Indian government to abandon to impose sweeping retroactive taxation affecting a large number of industries. CASBAA has taken up advocacy on behalf of the international satellite industry.
Both satellite operators and their Indian customers and consumers would suffer from the planned imposition of new tax rules. In its letter to the Indian Finance Ministry, CASBAA noted:
as far as the satellite industry is concerned – retroactivity could not be justified on the basis that the government was merely “clarifying” existing tax law.
Said CASBAA: “certain concepts that are fundamental to satellite services (i.e. satellite, up-linking, amplification, conversion for down-linking of any signal)…were not prevalent in India in 1976 and thus, it is inconceivable to think that a concept that did not exist in 1976 was intended to have been present in the legislation.”
Source: http://www.satnews.com/cgi-bin/story.cgi?number=901104838