Govt Will Talk To Cairn, Vodafone; Refund Their Paid Amounts Sans Interest: FM Sitharaman

Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman has assured that the central government will conduct talks with firms such as Cairn Energy and the Vodafone Group following the enactment of the law to scrap retrospective tax clause.

She has mentioned that the government will be refunding the amounts sans the interest that were paid by these companies.

Accordingly, the government is slated to refund Rs 7879.73 crore and Rs 44.74 crore to Cairn Energy and the Vodafone Group respectively.

The senior minister added that the altered provisions had ended up hardwiring the conditions within the given Act itself.

Under that, it is mentioned that the government will be only refunding the amounts paid by the companies under tax disputes.

“Discussions with the litigants will happen after the enactment of this law and once it is passed we are confident that they would also find the provisions very useful and probably consider taking into consideration what we brought in,” Sitharaman’s statement in the Rajya Sabha was quoted in a report by the Economic Times.

The 61-year-old claimed that the amendments to these tax laws are being enforced to provide greater clarity to businesses and bring in further consistency on the policy front.

Sitharaman added that the retrospective law couldn’t be struck down earlier as erstwhile Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley had deemed it fit for the government’s cases against Cairn and Vodafone to reach their logical conclusion before taking such a move.

The government lost the arbitration award to the aforementioned companies in the second half of 2020 and subsequently brought in the provision to scrap the law last week.