Foreign varsities offering distance education courses in India now can breathe a sigh of relief as recently the Delhi bench of the Income-tax Appellate Tribunal (ITAT) has held that payment received by a foreign university for offering distance educational courses in India is not taxable.
The ITAT appr
ehended that in order to consider a payment as royalty, the transaction should have been in the nature of transfer of any right, title, copyright, patent, trade mark, service mark, trade secret and other intellectual property or proprietary rights, which was not the case in the transaction under consideration.
Moreover, the tribunal said the role of the Indian company was confined to registering students and providing infrastructure for accessing the course material offered by the foreign university.
