India: Sales Taxes: VAT, GST

The Karnataka High Court examined whether healthcare services provided by a medical enterprise to patients through a contractual arrangement with another hospital qualify for GST exemption. The Revenue department argued for an 18% tax rate, while the assessee claimed exemption under healthcare service provisions. The Court's decision hinged on interpreting the legislative intent behind healthcare exemptions and determining whether service classification should follow contractual form or substantive nature.

India's regulatory landscape for financial record-keeping has undergone a quiet but consequential transformation over the past several years. The migration of books of accounts from physical ledgers to cloud-hosted platforms and SaaS-based enterprise resource planning systems has dramatically altered not just how financial data is stored, but where it resides and that question of where has become a matter of acute legal consequence.

Hundreds of businesses have found the last VAT filing cycle rushed and messy, and for genuine reasons. Over the past couple of years, FTA audits of UAE SME activity have significantly intensified, particularly between 2023 and 2024.