India - UK signs 3 more bilateral advance pricing agreements

The Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) signed three bilateral advance pricing agreements (APAs) between India and United Kingdom - taking the total number to 5 APAs between both the countries.

These three agreements involves international transactions in the nature of payment of intra-group service charges and is also related to the telecom industry, said in the release.

It said in the release, "These Agreements are a result of the understanding reached with the Competent Authority of United Kingdom (UK) some time ago. The Competent Authorities of India and UK had earlier exchanged mutual agreements amongst them under the Mutual Agreement Procedure (MAP) Article of the India-UK Double Taxation Avoidance Convention (DTAC)."

With this, the CBDT had signed 7 agreements of bilateral APAs and a total of 111 agreements including both bilateral and unilateral.

APA Programme was introduced by the Finance Act in the year 2012 with vision to provide a predictable and non-adversarial tax regime and to reduce the litigation in the Indian transfer pricing arena. An APA can be entered into for a maximum of 5 years at a time.