The Finance Ministry could have sidestepped a damaging multibillion-dollar tax row with foreign investors if it had acted on regular warning letters that officials had been sending since as long ago as September.
The warnings went unheeded, according to senior sources in the tax department and finance ministry, until the dispute with overseas investors over the imposition of the minimum alternate tax (MAT), which had not previously been applied to them, hammered the country`s stock and bond markets and dented the business-friendly image of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Investor lobbies and tax lawyers estimate the bill for international funds and banks could be as high as $8 billion.
Modi`s government has been scrambling to contain the fallout since foreign funds started publicising their fight against MAT in mid-April, but it could have headed off the row if it had acted on the cautionary letters from its tax officials.
One official`s letter seen by Reuters, sent in November, asked for direction and warned that once tax notices were issued there could be “large ramifications”.
“They were sitting on a powder keg waiting for it to explode,” said a senior official at the tax department.
The finance ministry last week asked officials to stop issuing new MAT notices, but that is some eight months after the first letter and roughly six weeks after a storm sparked by the sending of almost 70 initial claims totalling Rs 6 billion ($95 million).
A spokeswoman for the Central Board of Direct Taxes said it was “totally incorrect to say that the Finance Ministry did not appear to realise the seriousness of the issue” and denied that the ministry`s response was slow.
She said the issue was brought to the notice of the government as it prepared its annual budget for 2015-16, with Finance Minister Arun Jaitley announcing that MAT would no longer apply to foreign investors from April 2015.
But Jaitley, whom a senior government source said was aware of the issue from January, left open the question of liabilities for past years, citing an outstanding court ruling.
Last week, more than two months after the budget was announced, the government announced a temporary freeze on MAT notices pending a review.
