India, Sept. 19 -- Earlier in March, before the entire nation went into the first phase of lockdown, Finance Act 2020 ("the Act") came into effect which proposed several tax measures in order to fight against the pandemic including Section 153(iv) which added section 165A in the Finance Act 2016 and imposed an equalisation levy at 2% on the non-resident ecommerce operators.

This measure came at when the entire world was going through the phase of economic slowdown and the sector was functioning at minimum capacity. Apart from the timing, due to the lack of stakeholder consultation, the provision was itself filled with ambiguities and vagueness with no clarifications on this matter having been issued till date.

Further, this move also ca...