From Lax to Tax: India's Changing Policy on Overseas Taxation.

International taxation law has had its fair share of morality v. legality debates in the domain of tax havens. With increasing global trade, this debate has become increasingly important for emerging economies like India who, although earlier considered tax havens as an important source of foreign investment, is slowly changing its stance. India is slowly asking for its fair share of contributions since its tussle with lost revenue from tax havens in the Vodafone Essar tax dispute. This article elaborates certain general key points of the emergence and importance of tax havens in the twenty-first century era of globalization and then discussing how tax planning is carried out through treaty shopping. This article elaborately discusses the Indian legal regime with respect to treaty shopping and moves on to the discuss the issue of India's change in policy regarding treaty shopping. This article thus elucidates and explains the change taking the specific example of the recent changes to the Indo-Mauritius treaty and how it has a ripple effect on other international treaty systems with India -- India is choosing the path of increasing tax revenue rather than blindly trusting tax havens as a major source of foreign investment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]