Vodafone South Ltd. (VSL), on Thursday, gave an undertaking to the Karnataka High Court to pay Rs.75 crore to the Income-Tax Department out of the total Rs.257-crore arrears demand made by the authorities as TDS on payments made to non-resident telecom operators situated outside India for providing inter-connect international roaming service and acquisition of bandwidth capacity.
Also, VSL agreed to provide bank guarantee for the remaining portion of the arrears. However, the company said the department should undertake to return Rs.75 crore with interest if the company succeeds before the I-T Appellate Tribunal, where the company’s appeal questioning the demand made by the department is pending for adjudication.
The undertaking was given during the hearing of the petitions filed by the company seeking modification of the Tribunal’s interim order of asking the company to deposit Rs.100 crore for hearing its appeal against the demand.
Meanwhile, the Department too agreed to relax its insistence that the company should pay Rs.100 crore as directed by the Tribunal and to return the amount with interest.
Following this agreement, a Division Bench, comprising Dilip B. Bhosale and Justice B. Manohar, disposed of the plea directing the Tribunal to dispose of the company’s appeal within four months.
The department had treated the company as ‘defaulter’ of TDS for the financial years 2008-09 and 2012-13.
