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Sep 09, 2020
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Covid-19: The changing landscape of tax
It is almost six months in India, and more than eight months in other parts of the globe, that the Covid-19 pandemic has played havoc. Whenever this gets over, life isn’t going to be the same for everyone. There has been a paradigm change, from an office-going culture to work from home culture, face-to-face interactions to online meetings/interactions. The world of tax is no exception, and the government has already announced the roll-out of faceless assessment in income-tax. It is time for industry to commence assessing the impact of the lockdown on various aspects of business.
While these are early days to assess the overall impact, already, the World Bank and leading credit agencies have raised red flags with regards to large economies of the world, India included. The largest economies are going to contract this year, and the immediate focus is now on survival rather than growth. Growth is still a couple of quarters away, and given the dwindling of demand for goods and services, businesses are relooking at their cost structures and negotiating new rates to be effective for future transactions. The impact of the pandemic on domestic as well as international transactions is humongous. In India, we have already seen the GDP contract in the April-to-June quarter.
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