In just over three decades of the world wide web's
existence, over half of the world is now online; with the recent
pandemic only augmenting it multifold. With the first
generation of the web mostly being a passive
“read-only” web (based on information) and Web 2.0,
being a “read-write” web (based on social networks,
wikis and blogs), a major shift in tax policies was not direly
warranted. The essential reason for this being, that the underlying
activity continued to serve as a license (of data, information,
software, algorithms, etc.) - which most tax policies view as a
service. With online data/information business growing manifold,
the Indian indirect tax laws were maneuvered to include these
transactions in the fiscal revenue realm through prescription of
specific provisions for “online information and database
access or retrieval services”. Most global B2C online
licensing transactions purchased in India, were set down as taxable
under the indirect tax laws with
