Legitimate Tax Planning Legal, Not Illegal?

Prabhakar K S – [2021] 131 taxmann.com 263 (Article)

The recent ‘Order’ stating that ‘the Legitimate Tax Planning is Legal] by the Mumbai Bench of Income-tax Appellate Tribunal in ‘Michael E Desa v. ITO (International Taxation), [2021] 130 taxmann.com 314 and confidential financial secrecies termed ‘Pandora Papers’ by ‘International Consortium of Investigative Journalists’ has compelled mainstream business media to cover the ‘Issue of whether legitimate tax planning is legal or not, as their headlines.
It was not a surprise, the aforesaid ‘Order’ just reinstated the well-settled position ‘the legitimate tax planning is legal’ by quoting ‘just as much as we cannot legitimize and glorify tax evasion through colourable devices and tax shelters, we cannot also deprecate and disapprove genuine tax planning within the framework of the law. This brief write-up is an attempt to decipher the aforesaid ‘Question of Law’.

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