View: Retro tax move may not be enough to repair India’s reputation

After pussyfooting for seven years and damaging its international reputation, India’s government has finally taken a decisive step toward ending “tax terror,” fulfilling a pledge it had made during the 2014 campaign that first brought Prime Minister Narendra Modi to power. Is this a fresh start, the beginning of an open, predictable, and fair relationship between New Delhi and global capital? It’ll require a lot more evidence to answer that question in the affirmative.

The finance ministry has moved a bill in parliament to scrap retrospective taxation. Introduced in 2012 by the previous Congress Party-led coalition government, the draconian overreach empowered the exchequer to go back 50 years and slap capital gains levies wherever ownership had changed hands overseas but business assets were in India.