India has been fining international companies ridiculous amounts of money recently, I think the instability of the current government has something to do with it. Let's see what happens after the next election.
While retroactive applicability of Income Tax act is questionable, it is hard to argue for Vodafone or Hutchinson when they tried to avoid Tax by doing the transaction through a Cayman Island registered entity. To me, while it may be legal at that time, it sounds like pure corporate greed which Indian government is trying to fix. But that is not very different from other countries such as UK, Countries in EU trying to clamp down on Tax Haven exploits by Google etc.
Developed countries won't change rules for the past, since it is quite impossible to follow them...it just doesn't make sense. I'm also thinking of Nokia and uncertain tax liabilities, India is just a horrible place to do business these days, it's riskier than even china.
>> I think the instability of the current government has something to do with it.
Care to elaborate? I don't see the correlation between instability of a government and fining international companies for antitrust. Besides, the current United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government in India has been in power for 2 full terms (10 years). The second term is about to end now and the elections are due in April 2014.
