Will Budget 2021 slow down the digital tsunami?

The govt has been responsive to the needs and asks of industry and keenly focused on Ease of Doing Business. We hope that answers to some of the ambiguities find their way into the upcoming budget

The Indian government introduced provisions for Equalisation Levy (EL 1.0) on digital advertising and related services in 2016. This levy was extended to a wide variety of digital activities through the Finance Act, 2020 (EL 2.0). EL 1.0 was introduced based on the work of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) under the Base Erosion and Profit Shifting Project under Action Plan 1 on Digital Economy. While the Action Plan 1 did not give any specific recommendations, it discussed a few alternative approaches, one of them being an Equalisation Levy-type provision, which India adopted.  

Subsequently, OECD itself decided that