Dear Jasim, As per Indian Tax Law, every foreign payment related to subscribed online resources (Database/Journals) should be done after deducting Withholding Tax (WHT), also known as TDS (Tax Deducted at Source). This tax amount depends on various parameters like whether foreign vendor is giving Permanent Establishment Declaration (a certificate mentioning they don't have any PE in India), TRC (Tax Residency Certificate of resident country) and PAN in India. Also however it is fixed as per IT Law (25% currently), one can take benefit of Double Taxation Avoidance Agreement (DTAA) between India and foreign country. DTAA generally prescribes tax rates like 10% or 15 % and we have the option of taking beneficial position between these 2. So using DTAA provision, we can deduct 15% TDS for countries like USA, UK. But I am surprised that JSTOR has given you a credit of 15% amount. It looks like they expected that you will deduct 15% tax and accordingly they would have inflated the invoice value to factor this 15%. But when you have not deducted this tax, they would have passed this back to you in the form of credit note. I think you should appreciate JSTOR for this. I believe, we librarians are still not aware about Tax issues and we are dealing with various publishers without considering the tax implications. In India, tax laws are having retrospective effect, so if you have not deducted TDS any particular year, if caught, you may have to pay for all previous years with penalty. I am not playing devil's advocate here but we should know such regulatory provisions and accordingly deal with publishers. Actually some publishers have acknowledged this and they agreed to deduct TDS. Regarding Indian Tax Board, they would have meant Indian Tax authorities, where you have to remit the deducted tax. Regards Madhuresh Singhal Senior Manager - Knowledge Services Advinus Therapeutics Ltd (A TATA Enterprise) 21 & 22, Phase 2, Peenya Industrial Area, Bangalore - 560058 Phone: +91 80 66553106 E-mail: madhureshsinghal@yahoo.com -----Original Message----- From: lis-forum-bounces@ncsi.iisc.ernet.in [mailto:lis-forum-bounces@ncsi.iisc.ernet.in] On Behalf Of jasim s Sent: Thursday, May 22, 2014 10:42 PM To: lis-forum@ncsi.iisc.ernet.in Subject: [LIS-Forum] Indian tax board-what it is Dear Friends My colleague received a mail from JSTOR which is reproduced here.Kindly go through it and give a clarification/explain what this "indian tax board".Let me know whether 15% of payment has to without while making payment for subscribing e-resources? mail from JSTOR representative is here... "Thank you for remitting payment for renewal access to JSTOR journal content. We greatly appreciate your continued support and are delighted that you will continue to provide access to high quality content to your students, faculty, and researchers through the JSTOR platform. I am contacting you because we noticed that you have a credit on your account in the amount of $140.30 USD. You can use this credit toward new content such as additional journal packages, e-books or current issues. We would also like to learn more about how this credit may have occurred. We assume that institutions in India must withhold 15% their payments for electronic resources to be remitted to the Indian Tax Board. It appears your institution did not withhold this amount. Is your institution tax exempt or is there some other reason the amount was not withheld? I look forward to your feedback so that we might better serve you and other institutions in India. Also let me know if I can provide you with more information on additional content that may be of interest to you" Jasimudeen s Kerala www.jasim.in -- This message has been scanned for viruses and dangerous content by MailScanner, and is believed to be clean.