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Startups
April 16, 2024

'They left for their own selfishness': Piyush Goyal says startups reverse-flipping must pay tax

Many Indian startups domiciled abroad have been mulling shifting base, or reverse-flipping, to India on the back of favourable ecosystem.

Goyal also spoke on angel tax, saying it was brought in because "fly-by-night entities were using this route to inflate value and create capital".

Startups looking to reverse flip or come back to India will have to bear tax liabilities, Minister of Commerce and Industry, Piyush Goyal, reportedly said. 

Goyal, in an interview to the Economic Times, said it would be difficult to justify which company coming back should be taxed and which shouldn’t, adding that the firms left for their "own selfishness" so returning now cannot be termed as an altruistic move. 

Goyal also spoke on angel tax, saying it was brought in because "fly-by-night entities were using this route to inflate value and create capital".

Many Indian startups domiciled abroad have been mulling shifting base, or reverse-flipping, to India. These include companies engaged in areas such as fintech, e-commerce, stock broking, health care, and edtech.

Bhavish Aggarwal, founder of Ola Cabs, Ola Electric, and AI startup Krutrim, recently said on X that a significant majority of funding into Indian companies had come into firms domiciled in the country. Domiciling companies outside India, he said, was driven by shortsighted investors.

“Every entrepreneur who did this regretted it. At Ola Cabs, Ola Electric [and] Krutrim we were often nudged to do so. But chose not to. Any entrepreneur considering foreign domicile for an Indian business should stick to the first principles of incorporating where you and your company belong,” he said.

In March last year, the government noted that many Indian startups were domiciled abroad and set up a committee to suggest ways “to onshore the Indian innovation” to the International Financial Services Centre in the Gujarat International Finance Tec-City.

Sourced from Business Today

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