Friday, April 04, 2014: With all the court drama between the southern state government of Tamil Nadu and Finnish company Nokia, it seems both Supreme Court (SC) and Madras Hight Court (MHC) will referee the match. Nokia’s Indian arm has expressed to the MHC that the company will not be able to follow along the proposal to deposit money into an escrow account as security for the tax case. Nokia claims that liquidity issues have lead the firm to take such a step.
The Rs 24 billion tax case was filed by the Tamil Nadu government’s tax department against Nokia, alleging the company of domestically selling the products manufactured at its Chennai plant without paying proper taxes.
Since Nokia is all set to be taken over by Microsoft, a security deposit was asked to be deposited by the company. A separate case was filed by Nokia that countered the claim, calling it baseless.
According to an ET report, Arvind Datar, senior counsel Nokia told the court that Nokia India is facing liquidity issues. Datar responded to Justice Brajendran over depositing a certain part (Rs 1.2 billion or 5 per cent) of the claim in an escrow account, saying that the company has already paid Rs 7.8 billion income tax for the fiscal year 2013-14 (FY14).
