Architectural design services whether taxable as royalty/Fee for technical services under Article 12(3)/(4) of Indo-Singapore DTAA

Facts:

Assessee a Singapore resident had rendered specialized architectural design services from which incomes arose from India. It was the plea of the revenue that these were either taxable as royalty or as fee for technical services under Article 12(3)/(4) of the Indo-Singapore DTAA. Grounds of the assessee was these were specialized services which did not "make available" any exploitable benefits to the end users thus were outside the scope of the said article. CIT(A) concurred with the views of the assessee. Aggrieved revenue went in appeal to ITAT -

Held against the revenue that the architectural design services were customized and could not be applied elsewhere and hence they did not fall in the scope of Article 12 of the Indo-Singapore DTAA. The amounts were not taxable in India.

Applied:

DCIT v. Forum Homes (P) Ltd. (2022) 192 ITD 184 (Mum. Trib.) wherein the Tribunal on the similar fact pattern has held that the payment received in lieu of architectural design services does not qualify as FTS.

Pune Bench of the Tribunal in the case of Gera Developments P. Ltd. v. DCIT (2016) 160 ITD 439 (Pune-Trib) : 2016 TaxPub(DT) 3742 (Pune-Trib)

Calcutta High Court in CIT v. Davy Ashmore India Ltd. (1990) 190 ITR 626 (Cal-HC) : 1991 TaxPub(DT) 0903 (Cal-HC) - outright sale of drawings/designs are not copyrights.

Case: DCIT v. Aedas Pte. Ltd. 2023 TaxPub(DT) 4380 (Del-Trib)