Shanti Prime Publication Pvt. Ltd.
Sections 92, 92B, 92C of Income Tax Act, 1961—Transfer Pricing— Assessee filed appeal challenging the assessment order dated 14th January 2015, passed under section 143(3) r/w section 144C(13) of the Income Tax Act, 1961.The assessee, a resident company, is a subsidiary of Khazanah National Berhad (KNB), Malaysia. As stated by the Transfer Pricing Officer, KNB is an investment holding arm of the Government of Malaysia and the assessee provides non–binding investment advisory services to KNB. During the year under consideration, the assessee earned revenue for provision of investment advisory services to the AE. The aforesaid transaction with the AE was benchmarked by the assessee adopting Transactional Net Margin Method (TNMM) as the most appropriate method with Operating Profit/Operating Cost (OP/OC) as the Profit Level Indicator (PLI). For comparability purpose, the assessee selected seven companies as a comparable with average weighted margin of 18.23%. Since, the PLI shown by the assessee at 23.16% was higher than the average PLI of the comparables, the transaction with the AE was claimed to be at arm's length. The Transfer Pricing Officer, though, accepted TNMM as the most appropriate method with PLI of OP/OC, however, he did not accept most of the comparables selected by the assessee. Except, Future Capital Investment Advisories Ltd., the Transfer Pricing Officer. Except Future Capital Investment Advisors Ltd., the Transfer Pricing Officer accepted all other comparables selected by the assessee.
Court do not intend to deliberate further on any othercomparable at this stage and leave the issues relating to the comparability of the other comparables open for adjudication if they arise in assessee’s case in any other assessment year in future. The Assessing Officer is directed to determine the arm's length price of the international transaction with the AEs keeping in view our observations herein above. Grounds are partly allowed. --- KHAZANAH INDIA ADVISORS PVT. LTD. VS. Deputy CIT.[2020] 23 ITCD Online 31 (MUM)