THE COMMISSIONER OF INCOME TAX - INTERNATIONAL TAXATION -3 vs. SALESFORCE.COM SINGAPORE PTE. LTD.

The Revenue has filed the present appeal under Section 260A of the Income Tax Act, 1961 (hereafter the Act) impugning an order 17.05.2024 (hereafter the impugned order) passed by the learned Income Tax Appellate Tribunal (hereafter the ITAT).

It is material to note that the said impugned order is a common order in respect of four appeals concerning assessment years (AY 2018-19 to AY 2021-2022). The present appeal is confined to the impugned order in so far as it relates to the Assessee’s appeal being ITA No. 1789/DEL/2023 in respect of the AY 2020-2021. The controversy involved in the present appeal relates to the payments received by the Assessee for providing Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Services. According to the Revenue, the payment for the said services is chargeable to tax as fees for technical services under the Act as well as under the India-Singapore Double Taxation Avoidance Agreement (DTAA). The learned ITAT examined the issue and following the decision in respect of the earlier AYs, held that the receipts were not chargeable as fees for technical services.

In the aforesaid context, the Revenue has projected the following questions for consideration of this court:- This is a digitally signed order. The authenticity of the order can be re-verified from Delhi High Court Order Portal by scanning the QR code shown above. The Order is downloaded from the DHC Server on 27/03/2026 at 12:05:09

Whether Ld. ITAT has erred in law by holding that the subscription fee received is not taxable as Fee for Technical services under India-Singapore DTAA ignoring the fact that CRM software solutions was made available to the Indian customer users, so that they can use this data analysis independently without the support of services company and training is also provided to employees to Indian customer -users for the same, which is in the nature Fees for technical services under India Singapore DTAA?”