India–Czech Republic tax treaty — rates, PE and MLI

The rates, at a glance

Every figure below is taken from the article named beside it, not from a rates table. Read the condition in the same row before you use the rate — in this treaty the condition is usually the whole answer.

Income	Rate	The condition attached to it	Article
Dividends	10 per cent of the gross amount of the dividends — Art. 10(2). A single flat ceiling.	There is no shareholding threshold, no second tier and no holding period. The whole of Art. 10(2) is one sentence: 'However, such dividends may also be taxed in the Contracting State of which the company…	Article 10, paragraph 2
Interest	10 per cent of the gross amount of the interest — Art. 11(2), a single flat ceiling, conditional on the beneficial owner of the interest being a resident of the other Contracting State. Identical in both records.	The exemptions sit in the article itself, at art. 11(3), and the chapeau is the widest in this batch — read it in full before advising, because it has two alternative gateways, not one: 'Notwithstanding the…	Article 11, paragraph 2 and 3
Royalties	10 per cent of the gross amount — Art. 12(2). Royalties and fees for technical services share one article and one rate. No split, no lower tier for equipment royalties or copyright, no separate FTS rate. Conditional on beneficial ownership by a resident of the other Contracting State.	The Art. 12(3)(a) royalty definition contains a drafting peculiarity that is worth noticing and that differs from almost every other Indian treaty. It reads: '... Any patent, trade mark, design or model, plan…	Article 12, paragraph 2
Fees for technical services	10 per cent of the gross amount — the same rate as royalties, under the same Art. 12(2).	There is an FTS article and IT has no make-available limb. Art. 12(3)(b): 'The term fees for technical services as used in this Article means payments of any kind received as a consideration for the rendering…	Article 12, paragraph 2 and 3(b)

Status

In force	27 september 1999 — the Introduction records that the annexed Convention 'has come into force on the 27th day of September, 1999, on the notification by both the Contracting States to each other, under article 30 of the said Convention, of the completion of the procedures required under their respective laws'. Signed at prague on 1 october 1998 in Hindi, English and Czech, all three equally authentic, 'In case of divergence between the texts the English text shall be the operative one'. Effect under Art. 30(3): in India, income derived or capital held in any fiscal year beginning on or after 1 April next following the calendar year of entry into force — i.e. FY 2000-01 onwards; in the Czech Republic, for taxes withheld at source, income paid or credited on or after 1 January of the calendar year next following (1-1-2000), and for other taxes on income and taxes on capital, any taxable year beginning on or after that date. Supersession: Art. 30(4) provides that on entry into effect of this Convention, the agreement between the government of the czechoslovak socialist republic and the government of india signed at New Delhi on 27 january 1986 'shall, in relation between the czech republic and india, cease to have effect'. Note the careful wording — the 1986 Czechoslovak treaty ceases to have effect only as between India and the czech Republic; India's relations with slovakia continued to be governed by the 1986 instrument as a successor-state treaty until separately dealt with. A Slovakia question cannot be answered from this record.
Given effect by	G.S.R. 811(E) [No. 11160 (F. No. 503/6/93-ftd)], dated 8-12-1999 — issued under both s.90 of the Income-tax Act 1961 and section 44A of the wealth-tax act 1957. The dual statutory basis is not decorative: this is A taxes on income and on capital convention. It has a full article 23 (capital) as well as the income articles, and Art. 30(3)(a) speaks of 'income derived or capital held'. Most of the Indian network is income-only; this one is not, and the capital article survives in the treaty even though India's Wealth-tax Act was itself repealed with effect from AY 2016-17. The citation line carries a trailing asterisk ('dated 8-12-1999 *') pointing to a footnote whose text is not available here; see gaps.
Modified by the MLI	Yes — a synthesised text exists. Not dated on its face. It records that it 'was prepared on the basis of the MLI position of India submitted to the Depositary upon ratification on 25TH june, 2019 and of the MLI position of Czech Republic submitted to the Depositary upon ratification on 13TH may, 2020', so it postdates 13-5-2020. MLI entry into force: 1 october 2019 for India, 1 september 2020 for the Czech Republic. Entry into effect: in India, taxes withheld at source where the event giving rise to the tax occurs on or after 1 april 2021, and all other Indian taxes for taxable periods beginning on or after 1 april 2021; in the Czech Republic, withholding where the event occurs on or after 1 january 2021, and all other Czech taxes for taxable periods beginning on or after 1 march 2021. (The Czech 1 March date for non-withholding taxes is unusual and is as printed.)
Principal purpose test	Yes — MLI art. 7(1), the principal purposes test, inserted by the synthesised text after article 29 and before article 30. Which paragraphs of an existing anti-abuse article did IT replace? None — and the synthesised text says SO in its own words. The introductory sentence is 'The following paragraph 1 of Article 7 of the MLI applies and supersedes the provisions of this convention' — a bare supersession formula with no paragraph reference, no square-bracketed struck-through text and no 'replaces paragraph X of Article Y'. Contrast Malta in this same batch, where the equivalent introduction named specific paragraphs of an existing Article 27 and did so inconsistently with its own markup. Here there was no anti-abuse article to replace, nothing is struck through anywhere in the document, and the PPT is a pure addition. There is consequently no risk in this treaty of the hazard flagged for this batch — no residual paragraph of an old anti-abuse article is left standing behind the PPT, because there was no such article. Note one textual feature specific to this treaty: because the Convention covers capital as well as income, the PPT as rendered here reads 'a benefit under [the Convention] shall not be granted in respect of an item of income or capital' — the words 'or capital' are present, whereas in the income-only treaties in this batch (Portugal, Malta) the same MLI provision is rendered 'an item of income' alone. Simplified LOB (MLI Art. 7(6)) was not adopted — no simplified-LOB text appears anywhere. The PPT is therefore the only general anti-abuse rule in this treaty, and it applies in India to source withholding where the event occurs on or after 1 april 2021 and to other Indian taxes for taxable periods beginning on or after 1 april 2021. Before those dates this treaty had no general anti-abuse rule at all and the Indian revenue's only recourse was domestic law, including Chapter X-A GAAR from AY 2018-19.

Dividends

Rate	10 per cent of the gross amount of the dividends — Art. 10(2). A single flat ceiling.
The holding that unlocks it	There is no shareholding threshold, no second tier and no holding period. The whole of Art. 10(2) is one sentence: 'However, such dividends may also be taxed in the Contracting State of which the company paying the dividends is a resident and according to the laws of that State, but if the beneficial owner of the dividends is A resident of the other contracting state the tax so charged shall not exceed 10 per cent of the gross amount of the dividends.' The only condition is beneficial ownership by a resident of the other State. Any Czech resident — individual or company, 1 per cent holder or 100 per cent holder, held for a day or for a decade — gets 10 per cent. Because MLI Art. 8 was not applied, no 365-day holding requirement has been imported. Art. 10(2) closes with the standard saving that the paragraph does not affect taxation of the company on the profits out of which the dividends are paid.
Where this comes from	Article 10, paragraph 2

Art. 10(3) defines dividends as income from shares or other rights, not being debt-claims, participating in profits, and income from other rights subjected to the same taxation treatment as income from shares — note 'other rights', not the more usual 'other corporate rights', which is marginally wider. Art. 10(4) refers effectively-connected holdings to Art. 7 or Art. 14. Art. 10(5) bars extra-territorial taxation and taxation of undistributed profits. Reconciliation: Art. 10 is character-for-character identical in the Comprehensive record and the Synthesised Text; no MLI box attaches to it.

Interest

Rate	10 per cent of the gross amount of the interest — Art. 11(2), a single flat ceiling, conditional on the beneficial owner of the interest being a resident of the other Contracting State. Identical in both records.
Exemptions	The exemptions sit in the article itself, at art. 11(3), and the chapeau is the widest in this batch — read it in full before advising, because it has two alternative gateways, not one: 'Notwithstanding the provisions of paragraph 2, interest arising in a Contracting State shall be exempt from tax in that Contracting State provided IT is derived and beneficially owned by, or derived in connection with A loan or credit extended or endorsed by :'. The second gateway — interest 'derived in connection with A loan or credit extended or endorsed by' a listed body — means a commercial lender'S interest can be exempt even though the lender is not itself a listed institution, provided the loan or credit was extended or endorsed by one. 'Endorsed' plainly reaches guarantee and export-credit-insurance arrangements. This is materially wider than the ordinary 'derived and beneficially owned by' formula found in, for example, the Malta treaty, and it is the kind of qualifier that is routinely truncated away. Limb (a) — 'the Government, a political sub-division or a local authority of the other Contracting State'. Limb (b)(i) — india, seven named institutions, and the list is long: the reserve bank of india, the industrial finance corporation of india, the industrial development bank of india, the export import bank of india, the national housing bank, the small industries development bank of india and the industrial credit and investment corporation of india (icici). Limb (b)(ii) — czech republic, four named institutions: the czech national bank (cnb), the czech export bank (ceb), the export guarantee and insurance company (egic), and the konsolidation bank (kb). Both central banks are therefore expressly named, and both sides include export-credit and guarantee bodies — which is precisely what makes the 'extended or endorsed by' gateway commercially significant. Limb (c) — 'any other institution as may be agreed upon from time to time between the competent authorities of the Contracting States'. Note that, unlike the Malta treaty, this limb does not require an exchange of letters — any form of competent-authority agreement suffices. It is still not self-executing, and the sources used here reproduce no such agreement. Penalty charges for late payment are excluded from the interest definition by the closing sentence of Art. 11(4).
Where this comes from	Article 11, paragraph 2 and 3

The named institutions are A historical snapshot and that is A practical problem. The list was fixed in 1998. Icici (the Industrial Credit and Investment Corporation of India) reverse-merged into icici Bank in 2002; the Industrial Development Bank of India became idbi Bank; the Konsolidation Bank was wound up and its business transferred. Whether the exemption follows the successor entity is a question the treaty does not answer and this record cannot answer — the treaty names entities, not functions. Art. 11(6) is the full source rule ('when the payer is that State itself, a political sub-division, a local authority or a resident of that State') with the PE/fixed-base deeming override. Reconciliation: Art. 11 is character-for-character identical in both records and carries no MLI box.

Royalties

Rate	10 per cent of the gross amount — Art. 12(2). Royalties and fees for technical services share one article and one rate. No split, no lower tier for equipment royalties or copyright, no separate FTS rate. Conditional on beneficial ownership by a resident of the other Contracting State.
Where this comes from	Article 12, paragraph 2

The Art. 12(3)(a) royalty definition contains a drafting peculiarity that is worth noticing and that differs from almost every other Indian treaty. It reads: '... Any patent, trade mark, design or model, plan, secret formula or process, or any industrial, commercial or scientific equipment or for information concerning industrial, commercial or scientific experience.' The words 'for the use of, or the right to use' are not repeated before 'any industrial, commercial or scientific equipment'. On a literal reading the equipment limb is drafted as consideration for 'any equipment' rather than for the use of equipment, which would push equipment sales into the royalty definition. That cannot have been intended and the opening words of para 3(a) ('consideration for the use of, or the right to use') are most naturally read as governing the whole enumeration, but the omission is in the notified text and should not be paraphrased away. Films are inside the definition: 'any copyright of literary, artistic or scientific work including cinematograph films, and films or tapes for television or radio broadcasting'. Art. 12(5) is the standard source rule with the PE/fixed-base deeming override, but note there is no second-limb catch-all of the Malta Art. 12(5)(b) kind — if royalties or FTS do not arise in either State under the primary source rule, this treaty does not deem them to arise anywhere.

Fees for technical services

Rate	10 per cent of the gross amount — the same rate as royalties, under the same Art. 12(2).
Make-available requirement	No
Where this comes from	Article 12, paragraph 2 and 3(b)

There is an FTS article and IT has no make-available limb. Art. 12(3)(b): 'The term fees for technical services as used in this Article means payments of any kind received as a consideration for the rendering of any managerial, technical or consultancy services including the provision of services by technical or other personnel but does not include payments for services mentioned in articles 14 and 15 of this Convention.' The words 'make available', 'enable', 'technical plan' and 'technical design' appear nowhere in the Convention or in the Synthesised Text — verified by full-text search of both records. Four consequences. First, a Czech service provider cannot escape Art. 12 by showing that nothing was transmitted to the Indian payer; the character of the service is the whole test. Second, managerial services are expressly included, so management fees, head-office charges and secondment arrangements are within the article — the US and UK treaties do not reach managerial services. Third, the only exclusion is for payments for services within Art. 14 (independent personal services) and Art. 15 (dependent personal services); there is no negative list of the US/Portugal kind — nothing carved out for services ancillary to a sale of property, for construction or assembly services, for natural-resources services, for teaching or for personal-use services. Contrast Portugal in this same batch, whose Art. 12(5) removes construction and natural-resources services from FTS altogether. Fourth — and this is the combination that matters — because this treaty also has no service PE (see pe), the only route by which India taxes a Czech enterprise's service income is Art. 12 at 10 per cent gross, unless a fixed place of business, a six-month construction site or a dependent agent exists. There is no MFN clause anywhere in this treaty by which a make-available limb could be imported from a later Indian treaty, so the absence is permanent unless the treaty is renegotiated. Reconciliation: Art. 12 is character-for-character identical in both records; no MLI box attaches to it.

Capital gains on shares

Treatment	Full source-state taxing right over share gains, in A separate paragraph of its own, and the MLI has not touched IT. Article 13 is drafted in six paragraphs, one more than the usual five, because the shares limb is split in two. Art. 13(4): 'Gains from the alienation of shares of the capital stock of a company the property of which consists directly or indirectly principally of immovable property situated in a Contracting State may be taxed in that State.' Art. 13(5): 'Gains from the alienation of shares other than those mentioned in paragraph 4 in a company which is A resident of A contracting state may be taxed in that state.' Paragraph 5 is an unrestricted source-State taxing right over ordinary share gains — no percentage test, no minimum holding, no listing carve-out, no de minimis. Art. 13(6) is the residual: gains from any property other than that in paras 1 to 5 are taxable only in the alienator's State of residence. So India may tax a Czech resident's gain on shares of an Indian company, whatever the company's asset mix. This is the same structure that portugal had before the MLI — and the crucial difference is that in portugal the MLI's Art. 9(4) replaced the equivalent paragraph and destroyed the general shares right, whereas here MLI art. 9(4) was not applied at all. There is no MLI capital-gains box anywhere in the Czech Synthesised Text. Both records show Article 13 in identical terms and the taxing right is intact.
Grandfathering	None, and none is needed — this taxing right has been in the treaty since it entered into force on 27-9-1999 and has never been added, removed or narrowed. There is no shares-acquired-before date, no transition rate, no limitation-of-benefits gateway attached to Art. 13 and no MLI look-back rule. The only cut-off in the treaty's history is Art. 30(4), which ended the 1986 Czechoslovak treaty's application as between India and the Czech Republic.
Conditions	Art. 13(5) is unconditional. Art. 13(4) turns on the undefined word 'principally' — the treaty supplies no percentage, no valuation date and no 365-day look-back (the MLI would have supplied a hard more-than-50-per-cent test and a 365-day look-back, but it was not applied here). In practice the distinction between paras 4 and 5 matters little for India, since both give the source State a taxing right; it matters for identifying which State may tax where the company is resident in one State and its immovable property is in the other. Note also that paras 1 and 2 of this Article use 'may also be taxed' rather than the usual 'may be taxed' — a small drafting difference that puts the shared-taxation character beyond argument for immovable property and PE property.
Where this comes from	Article 13, paragraph 4, 5 and 6

Permanent establishment

Construction or installation PE	More than six months — Art. 5(3): 'A building site or construction, assembly or installation project or supervisory activities in connection therewith constitute a permanent establishment only if such site, project or activities last more than six months.' Assembly, installation and supervisory activity are all inside the six-month test. MLI Art. 14 (splitting-up of contracts) was not applied, so there is no anti-splitting aggregation rule.
Service PE	None. There is no service PE in this treaty. Art. 5 contains no 'furnishing of services, including consultancy services, through employees or other personnel' limb and no day threshold for services of any kind — Art. 5(3) deals only with building sites and projects. This is the defining feature of the czech treaty and IT must be read together with article 12. A Czech enterprise rendering technical, managerial or consultancy services in India creates no Indian PE however long the personnel stay, unless it has a fixed place of business, a six-month construction/assembly/installation site, or a dependent agent. Its service fee is instead taxed under Art. 12 at 10 per cent of the gross amount, with no make-available filter and no deduction for costs. For a low-margin services contract that gross basis can exceed the tax a net-basis PE charge would produce, and s.90(2) of the Income-tax Act permits the taxpayer to take whichever of the treaty and domestic law is more beneficial — so the comparison should be run in every case. Where a PE does exist, Art. 12(4) refers the income to Art. 7 and the net basis applies.
Agency PE	Yes — Art. 5(5), but only two limbs, which is narrower than Malta's three: (a) has and habitually exercises an authority to conclude contracts in the name of the enterprise, unless the person's activities are limited to those in para 4 which, if exercised through a fixed place of business, would not make it a PE; or (b) has no such authority but habitually maintains a stock of goods from which he regularly delivers on behalf of the enterprise. There is no order-securing limb of the Malta Art. 5(5)(c) kind. Art. 5(7) is the independent-agent exclusion with the anti-exclusivity rider: 'when the activities of such an agent are devoted wholly or almost wholly on behalf of that enterprise, he will not be considered an agent of an independent status' — exclusivity alone defeats independence; unlike the Philippines treaty there is no additional non-arm's-length requirement. Art. 5(6) is a separate insurance PE (premiums collected or risks insured in the other State through a person other than an independent agent, except re-insurance). MLI Art. 12 was not applied, so Art. 5(5)(a) keeps its pre-beps 'in the name of the enterprise' formulation and there is no commissionnaire rule.
Where this comes from	Article 5

Art. 5(2) has nine inclusive limbs and three of them are wider than the OECD list: '(h) A warehouse in relation to A person providing storage facilities for others' — a warehouse PE written into the Article itself, where Portugal had to put the same rule in a protocol; '(i) A farm, plantation or other place where agricultural, forestry, plantation or related activities are carried on'; and '(g) a sales outlet'. None carries a duration test. Another point that is easy to miss: art. 5(4)(a) and (b) exclude only 'storage or display' — the word 'delivery' is absent. Almost every Indian treaty excludes 'storage, display or delivery'; this one does not. A fixed place of business used for delivery of goods is therefore not within the Art. 5(4)(a)/(b) exclusions in the Czech treaty and can constitute a PE. That omission long pre-dates beps Action 7 and achieves, bilaterally, what MLI Art. 13 Option A was designed to achieve. MLI Art. 13 was not applied to this treaty, so there is no anti-fragmentation overlay and no 'closely related enterprise' definition — but none is needed for the delivery point, which is already handled. Reconciliation: Art. 5 differs between the two records only in punctuation and hyphenation ('especially :' / 'especially:', 'sub-paragraphs' / 'subparagraphs', 'first-mentioned' / 'first- mentioned', 'person—' / 'person:'). No substantive divergence.

Anti-abuse: limitation of benefits, and the MLI

LOB	None. There is no limitation-of-benefits article in either record, no shell or conduit test, no bona fide business test, no listed-company gateway and no expenditure test. The Convention runs Art. 25 Non-discrimination, Art. 26 map, Art. 27 Exchange of Information, art. 28 collection assistance, Art. 29 diplomats, Art. 30 Entry into force, Art. 31 Termination — and no anti-abuse article anywhere. Beneficial ownership in Arts. 10, 11 and 12 is the only bilateral abuse filter in the rate articles.
PPT	Yes — MLI art. 7(1), the principal purposes test, inserted by the synthesised text after article 29 and before article 30. Which paragraphs of an existing anti-abuse article did IT replace? None — and the synthesised text says SO in its own words. The introductory sentence is 'The following paragraph 1 of Article 7 of the MLI applies and supersedes the provisions of this convention' — a bare supersession formula with no paragraph reference, no square-bracketed struck-through text and no 'replaces paragraph X of Article Y'. Contrast Malta in this same batch, where the equivalent introduction named specific paragraphs of an existing Article 27 and did so inconsistently with its own markup. Here there was no anti-abuse article to replace, nothing is struck through anywhere in the document, and the PPT is a pure addition. There is consequently no risk in this treaty of the hazard flagged for this batch — no residual paragraph of an old anti-abuse article is left standing behind the PPT, because there was no such article. Note one textual feature specific to this treaty: because the Convention covers capital as well as income, the PPT as rendered here reads 'a benefit under [the Convention] shall not be granted in respect of an item of income or capital' — the words 'or capital' are present, whereas in the income-only treaties in this batch (Portugal, Malta) the same MLI provision is rendered 'an item of income' alone. Simplified LOB (MLI Art. 7(6)) was not adopted — no simplified-LOB text appears anywhere. The PPT is therefore the only general anti-abuse rule in this treaty, and it applies in India to source withholding where the event occurs on or after 1 april 2021 and to other Indian taxes for taxable periods beginning on or after 1 april 2021. Before those dates this treaty had no general anti-abuse rule at all and the Indian revenue's only recourse was domestic law, including Chapter X-A GAAR from AY 2018-19.
Subject to tax	None. There is no subject-to-tax clause, no remittance-basis limitation, no thin-capitalisation saving and no special-regime exclusion — there is no Protocol in which to put one. Art. 25 (Non-discrimination) has no thin-capitalisation carve-out of the Portuguese kind, which makes a s.94B non-discrimination argument marginally more open here than under treaties whose protocols expressly preserve thin-capitalisation rules.
Where this comes from	Article MLI Art. 7(1), inserted between Convention Arts. 29 and 30; no LOB article exists

Only two MLI provisions appear in the whole document, and this is one of the lightest MLI overlays in the batch. (1) MLI art. 6(1) — the anti-treaty-shopping preamble is added to the preamble. (2) MLI art. 7(1) — the principal purposes test, inserted after Article 29 and before Article 30, introduced with the words 'The following paragraph 1 of Article 7 of the MLI applies and supersedes the provisions of this convention'. That is all. Nothing else changed. Specifically: MLI Art. 9(4) — the 365-day / more-than-50-per-cent immovable-property share-gains rule — was not applied, so unlike Portugal and Malta there is no MLI capital-gains box and Art. 13 stands exactly as notified in 1999; MLI Art. 11 (saving clause) not applied; MLI Art. 12 (commissionnaire) not applied, so Art. 5(5)(a) keeps 'authority to conclude contracts in the name of the enterprise'; MLI Art. 13 (specific activity exemptions) not applied, so Art. 5(4) keeps its unconditional pre-beps exclusions with no anti-fragmentation overlay and no 'closely related enterprise' concept; MLI Art. 14 (splitting-up of contracts) not applied; MLI Art. 8 (dividend transfer transactions) not applied, though there is no holding-based dividend tier here for it to affect. A word-level comparison of Articles 5, 10, 11, 12 and 13 between the two records found Articles 10, 11, 12 and 13 character-for-character identical, and Article 5 differing only in punctuation and hyphenation ('especially :' vs 'especially:', 'sub-paragraphs' vs 'subparagraphs', 'person—' vs 'person:'). There is no poland-type or belgium-type divergence in this treaty: neither record is stale relative to the other on any rate, definition or article.

The protocols, in order

A treaty read without its protocols is a wrong answer.

None. There is not one amending notification and not A single amendment marker anywhere in the Comprehensive Agreement, across all 31 Articles. The citation line names one notification and one date, with no 'as amended by' and no 'as corrected by' clause. This is a clean, never-amended text.
There is no protocol to this treaty. The Agreement runs from Article 1 to Article 31 (Termination) and stops — there is no protocol, and the text runs from the Art. 31 termination clause straight to the testimonium and ends. This matters because several of the qualifiers that other Indian treaties put in a protocol (head-office expense limits, warehouse PE, thin-capitalisation savings) simply do not exist here.
The MLI does modify this treaty, but only lightly — see synthesised_text.

The words themselves

Quoted from the treaty as notified.

interest arising in a Contracting State shall be exempt from tax in that Contracting State provided it is derived and beneficially owned by, or derived in connection with a loan or credit extended or endorsed by :

Article 11, paragraph 3 (chapeau) of the treaty as notified.

The term "fees for technical services" as used in this Article means payments of any kind received as a consideration for the rendering of any managerial, technical or consultancy services including the provision of services by technical or other personnel but does not include payments for services mentioned in Articles 14 and 15 of this Convention.

Article 12, paragraph 3(b) of the treaty as notified.

Gains from the alienation of shares other than those mentioned in paragraph 4 in a company which is a resident of a Contracting State may be taxed in that State.

Article 13, paragraph 5 of the treaty as notified.

A building site or construction, assembly or installation project or supervisory activities in connection therewith constitute a permanent establishment only if such site, project or activities last more than six months.

Article 5, paragraph 3 of the treaty as notified.

the use of facilities solely for the purpose of storage or display of goods or merchandise belonging to the enterprise

Article 5, paragraph 4(a) — note the absence of the word 'delivery', which almost every other Indian treaty includes of the treaty as notified.

a warehouse in relation to a person providing storage facilities for others

Article 5, paragraph 2(h) of the treaty as notified.

On the entry into effect of this Convention, the application of the Agreement between the Government of the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic and the Government of India for the avoidance of double taxation and the prevention of fiscal evasion with respect to taxes on income signed at New Delhi on 27th January, 1986 shall, in relation between the Czech Republic and India, cease to have effect.

Article 30, paragraph 4 of the treaty as notified.

What to watch

Reconciliation of the two records — nothing to reconcile on substance, and that itself is worth recording. Both records were read end to end and Articles 5, 10, 11, 12 and 13 were compared by normalised text comparison. Articles 10, 11, 12 and 13 are character-for-character identical between the Comprehensive Agreement record and the Synthesised Text. Article 5 differs only in punctuation and hyphenation. The Comprehensive record carries zero amendment markers; the Synthesised Text carries exactly two MLI boxes (preamble and PPT) and nothing else. Neither record is stale. Marker count: zero in the Comprehensive record against two MLI insertions in the Synthesised Text — a treaty that has been touched once in twenty-six years, and only by the MLI.
No most-favoured-nation clause. A full-text search of both records returned no hit for 'most favoured', 'most-favoured', 'third State' or 'OECD' anywhere in the Convention or the Synthesised Text. There is no MFN on dividends, interest, royalties, FTS or capital gains; nothing is tied to a later Indian treaty; nothing covers scope; and no notification has ever been or could be issued under such a clause. There is also no protocol in which an MFN clause could have been hidden — this treaty has none. This is the decisive point for czech FTS planning: the argument that succeeds under the Netherlands, France, Spain, Hungary and Swedish protocols — importing a make-available limb through an MFN clause — has no footing at all in the czech treaty. Managerial, technical and consultancy fees are taxable in India at 10 per cent gross and no treaty argument reduces that.
This is A taxes on income and on capital convention, not an income-only one. It was notified under s.90 of the Income-tax Act 1961 and s.44A of the Wealth-tax Act 1957. Article 23 (capital) allocates taxing rights over capital represented by immovable property, by movable property of a PE or fixed base, by ships and aircraft in international traffic, and residually. India's Wealth-tax Act was abolished by the Finance Act 2015 with effect from AY 2016-17, so Art. 23 has no Indian counterpart to restrain at present — but it remains in force and would bite again if India reintroduced a capital tax, and it continues to restrain Czech taxation of Indian residents' Czech capital. The MLI's PPT, as rendered in this treaty, expressly extends to 'an item of income or capital'.
The three features of article 5 that depart from the indian norm are all worth flagging together. (i) no service PE — services alone never create a PE here. (ii) the art. 5(4)(a)/(b) exclusions omit 'delivery' — a delivery facility is not excluded, so a delivery warehouse can be a PE even before the anti-fragmentation debate begins. (iii) art. 5(2)(h) makes A third-party storage warehouse A PE in the article itself. Points (ii) and (iii) pull in the same direction and make this treaty comparatively hard on logistics and distribution structures, while point (i) makes it comparatively soft on services structures — the opposite balance from Malta, which has a 90-day service PE but the ordinary 'occasional delivery' exclusion.
Article 28 (collection assistance) is present but dormant on its own terms. Art. 28(6) provides: 'Notwithstanding the provisions of Article 30 relating to entry into force of this Convention, the application of this article shall commence on A date to be mutually agreed upon by the competent authorities of the contracting state.' The collection-assistance article therefore did not come into effect with the rest of the Convention on 27-9-1999 and does not operate until the competent authorities fix a date. The sources used here record no such agreement. Art. 28(5) additionally relieves either State of any obligation to carry out administrative measures of a different nature from those used in collecting its own taxes, or contrary to its public policy.
Article 22 (other income) is residence-only in para 1, with A PE carve-out in para 2 and A gambling limb in para 3: 'if a resident of a Contracting State derives income from sources within the other Contracting State in the form of lotteries, crossword puzzles, races including horse races, card games and other games of any sort or gambling or betting of any form or nature whatsoever, such income may be taxed in the other contracting state.' Indian-source winnings therefore retain full Indian source taxation notwithstanding the otherwise residence-only rule — the same limb appears in the Malta treaty in this batch.
Slovakia is not covered by this record. Art. 30(4) terminated the 1986 Czechoslovak treaty only 'in relation between the czech republic and India'. Anyone with a Slovak counterparty must look to a different instrument; this Convention has no application to Slovakia and the Czech Republic material says nothing about it.

What this page does not tell you. The citation line ends 'dated 8-12-1999 *' with a trailing asterisk. The text behind that asterisk is not available here, so what it says — most likely a Gazette reference or a note about the superseded 1986 treaty — is not established. The Gazette page/part reference for G.S.R. 811(E) of 8-12-1999 is not given; only the number, the internal number (No. 11160) and the file number. Art. 11(3)(c) allows further exempt institutions to be 'agreed upon from time to time between the competent authorities'. Whether any have been agreed since 1998, and whether the exemption follows successor entities where a named institution has since merged or been wound up (icici into icici Bank, idbi into idbi Bank, the Konsolidation Bank), is not established from the sources used here and cannot be answered from the treaty text. Art. 28(6) makes the collection-assistance article depend on a date to be mutually agreed by the competent authorities. Whether such a date has ever been agreed is not established from the sources used here; on the face of the record Article 28 remains inoperative. Art. 13(4) uses 'principally' without definition — no percentage, no valuation date, no look-back period, and the MLI's hard more-than-50-per-cent test with a 365-day look-back was not applied to this treaty. The Synthesised Text is undated on its face; only that it postdates the Czech ratification deposit of 13-5-2020. The apparent omission of 'for the use of, or the right to use' before 'any industrial, commercial or scientific equipment' in Art. 12(3)(a) cannot be checked against the Gazette from the sources used here. The position of slovakia — whether the 1986 Czechoslovak treaty continued to apply, and what governs India-Slovakia relations now — is outside this record entirely.

The India–Czech Republic tax treaty