India–Egypt 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	There is no rate cap. None. This is the single most important thing to know about the Egypt treaty and it is the opposite of what a practitioner reaching for a dividends article expects. Art. 11(1) reads, in its entirety: 'Dividends paid by a company which is a resident of India to a resident of the United Arab Republic may be taxed in india.' There is no second paragraph limiting Indian tax, no percentage, no 'shall not exceed', no beneficial-ownership condition and no threshold. India taxes outbound dividends to an Egyptian resident at its full domestic rate — currently s.115A read with the applicable surcharge and cess — and the treaty does nothing to reduce it.	Not applicable — there is no tiering because there is no cap. Do not read Art. 11 as though a rate were implied. The article is a pure allocation provision drafted in the 1960s style: it says who may tax, not…	Article 11, paragraph 1
Interest	There is no rate cap. Art. 12(1), in its entirety: 'Interest paid by a resident of India to a resident of the United Arab Republic may be taxed in india.' No percentage, no ceiling, no beneficial-ownership condition, no two-tier structure. India taxes outbound interest at its full domestic rate.	There are no exemptions. Not in the article, not in A protocol (there is none), not in the exchange of letters (which deals only with airlines), and not anywhere else in the instrument. This is the answer to…	Article 12, paragraph 1 and 3
Royalties	No rate cap — and, more than that, exclusive source-state taxation. Art. 13(1) reads: 'Royalties arising in a Contracting State and paid to a resident of the other Contracting State shall be taxable only in the first-mentioned state.' Not 'may also be taxed', not 'shall not exceed X per cent' — taxable only in the state in which they arise. So an Indian-source royalty paid to an Egyptian resident is taxable in India at full domestic rates and is not taxable in Egypt at all; the residence State's taxing right is excluded outright. This is the reverse of the modern shared-taxation-with-a-cap model and it means the treaty gives an Egyptian royalty recipient nothing by way of Indian rate relief — its only benefit is the removal of Egyptian tax.	The royalty definition has A carve-out that must not be truncated. Art. 13(2) covers payments for the use of, or the right to use, any copyright of literary, artistic or scientific work, any patent, trade…	Article 13, paragraph 1
Fees for technical services	—	There is no fees-for-technical-services article in this treaty and no FTS limb inside article 13. The word 'technical' appears in the whole instrument only in Art. 21(b), which exempts a 'business or technical…	—

Status

In force	The date is not stated anywhere in the record, and that is itself the finding. The Introduction says only that the annexed Convention 'has been ratified and the instruments of ratification exchanged, as required by article xxix of the said Convention' — no date. Art. 29(2) provides that the Convention enters into force on the date of the exchange of the instruments of ratification, and the effect provisions are all keyed to 'the calendar year in which the exchange of the instruments of ratification takes place'. Since the notification is dated 30-9-1969, the exchange must have occurred in or before September 1969, which on Art. 29(2)(a)(ii) would give effect in India for income derived during any previous year beginning on or after 1 january 1969. That is A derivation, not A figure the record supplies. Signed at cairo on 20 february 1969, 'in the english language' only — no Hindi or Arabic text, so no divergence-of-texts clause is needed and none appears. One retrospective limb: Art. 29(2)(a)(i) and (b)(i) give article 8 (air transport) effect for income derived in previous years/accounting periods beginning or ending on or after 1 january 1961 — eight years before signature. The accompanying exchange of letters, reproduced in full at the end of the record and expressly agreed by both sides to 'be part of the Convention', requires each State to refund or refrain from charging taxes already paid or payable by the other State's designated airline for those years, and names the designated airlines as air india and united arab airlines.
Given effect by	G.S.R. 2363, dated 30-9-1969 — issued under both s.90 of the Income-tax Act 1961 and section 24A of the companies (profits) surtax act 1964. The surtax basis matters: Art. 2(3)(a) lists for India '(1) the income-tax, including super-tax and the surcharge, imposed under the Income-tax Act, 1961, and (2) the surtax imposed under the Companies (Profits) Surtax Act, 1964'. Art. 2(3)(b) lists nine Egyptian taxes by name — tax on income derived from immovable property (including the land tax, the buildings tax and the ghaffir tax), tax on income from movable capital, tax on commercial and industrial profits, tax on wages salaries indemnities and pensions (as mentioned in Book III of Law 14 of 1939), tax on profits from liberal professions and all other non-commercial professions, general income-tax, defence tax, national security tax, and supplementary taxes imposed as a percentage of the above. The title of this instrument is narrower than every other treaty in this batch: it is a Convention 'for the avoidance of double taxation with respect to taxes on income' — there is no 'and the prevention of fiscal evasion' limb in the title or in the preamble. That is consistent with the complete absence of any anti-abuse machinery in the instrument.
Modified by the MLI	No synthesised text was found for this treaty in the source searched.
Principal purpose test	None. No principal purposes test, no main-purpose test in any article, no MLI PPT — because no synthesised text exists for Egypt. This treaty has no general anti-abuse rule and no beneficial-ownership filter. It is, on that measure, the least defended instrument in the batch — weaker even than the Philippines and Turkey treaties, both of which at least require beneficial ownership in their rate articles. In practical terms this matters less than it might, because the treaty concedes India almost nothing to abuse: there is no rate cap on dividends, none on interest, exclusive source taxation of royalties, and exclusive source taxation of share gains. The exposures that remain are on the other side of the ledger — Art. 7(1) barring Indian taxation of Egyptian business profits absent a PE, Art. 6(1) and Art. 14(1) barring Indian taxation of foreign-situs property income and gains, and Art. 24(1) requiring India to exempt (not merely credit) most Egyptian-taxable income of Indian residents. The Indian revenue's only recourse against an abusive structure is domestic law, including Chapter X-A GAAR read with s.90(2A).

Dividends

Rate	There is no rate cap. None. This is the single most important thing to know about the Egypt treaty and it is the opposite of what a practitioner reaching for a dividends article expects. Art. 11(1) reads, in its entirety: 'Dividends paid by a company which is a resident of India to a resident of the United Arab Republic may be taxed in india.' There is no second paragraph limiting Indian tax, no percentage, no 'shall not exceed', no beneficial-ownership condition and no threshold. India taxes outbound dividends to an Egyptian resident at its full domestic rate — currently s.115A read with the applicable surcharge and cess — and the treaty does nothing to reduce it.
The holding that unlocks it	Not applicable — there is no tiering because there is no cap. Do not read Art. 11 as though a rate were implied. The article is a pure allocation provision drafted in the 1960s style: it says who may tax, not how much.
Where this comes from	Article 11, paragraph 1

Article numbering trap, the same one as the philippines treaty in this batch: Associated Enterprises is Art. 10, dividends is Art. 11, interest is Art. 12, royalties is Art. 13, capital gains is Art. 14, Independent Personal Services is Art. 15. Internal cross-references are in roman numerals (article VI, article XI, article xxiv, article xxix) while the headings are in Arabic — a practitioner must convert. The rest of article 11 is about egyptian domestic law and is largely obsolete, but it must be read because it is the only place the treaty limits anything. Art. 11(2) provides that Egyptian-source dividends paid to an Indian resident may be taxed in Egypt but 'shall only be subject to the tax on income derived from movable capital, the defence tax, the national security tax and the supplementary taxes (which taxes shall be deducted at the source)', with the general income-tax additionally imposable only on a natural person — a limitation by reference to named egyptian taxes rather than by rate. It also requires dividends distributed out of the same year's taxable profits (but not out of accumulated reserves) to be deducted from the distributing company's taxable profits. Art. 11(3) and (4) are mirror provisions for companies whose activities lie solely or mainly in the other State. Art. 11(5) is a deemed branch distribution rule tied to article 11 of Egyptian Law 14 of 1939: an Indian company's Egyptian permanent establishment is deemed to have distributed, within 60 days of its financial year end, 90 per cent of its total net profits liable to Egyptian commercial and industrial profits tax, the remaining 10 per cent being set aside as a special reserve shown in the local balance sheet — and any amount later drawn from that 10 per cent reserve for a purpose other than redeeming trading losses of that establishment 'shall be deemed to have been distributed in the united arab republic and shall be taxed accordingly'. Art. 11(6) preserves the application of article 4 of Egyptian Law 14 of 1939. All of this is drafted against a 1939 Egyptian statute and a 1961 Indian one; whether the named Egyptian taxes still exist in that form is outside this record.

Interest

Rate	There is no rate cap. Art. 12(1), in its entirety: 'Interest paid by a resident of India to a resident of the United Arab Republic may be taxed in india.' No percentage, no ceiling, no beneficial-ownership condition, no two-tier structure. India taxes outbound interest at its full domestic rate.
Exemptions	There are no exemptions. Not in the article, not in A protocol (there is none), not in the exchange of letters (which deals only with airlines), and not anywhere else in the instrument. This is the answer to the question the brief poses about where the government/central-bank exemption sits: in this treaty IT does not exist. There is no exemption for interest derived by the Government of the other State, none for a political sub-division or local authority, none for the central bank — the words 'Reserve Bank of India' and 'Central Bank' appear in the Convention only once, in art. 20(2), and there only to bring the remuneration and pensions paid by the Central Bank of Egypt and the Reserve Bank of India within the governmental functions article. There is no approved-institution limb, no export-credit limb, and no 'any other institution as may be agreed' mechanism. Interest paid by an Indian borrower to the Government of Egypt or to the Central Bank of Egypt is, under this treaty, taxable in India without limit; any relief would have to come from Indian domestic law (for example s.10(15) of the Income-tax Act), not from the treaty. Nor is there any carve-out for penalty charges for late payment. On the contrary, art. 12(3) defines interest unusually widely: it 'includes income from Government securities, bonds or debentures (exclusive of interest on debts secured by mortgages on real estate, in which case article VI shall apply) and whether or not carrying a right to participate in profits, and debt-claims of every kind as well as all other income assimilated to income from money lent by the taxation law of the state in which the income arises'. Two qualifiers to note: interest on debts secured by mortgages on real estate is taken out of Article 12 and sent to Article 6 (immovable property), where under Art. 6(1) it is taxable only in the State where the property is situated; and the closing words import whatever the source State's own law assimilates to interest, so the definition expands with domestic law.
Where this comes from	Article 12, paragraph 1 and 3

Art. 12(2) is the mirror for Egyptian-source interest, again limiting Egypt not by rate but by reference to named Egyptian taxes deducted at source. Art. 12(4) is a standard source rule (payer is the State, a sub-division, a local authority or a resident) with a PE deeming override — but note there is no fixed-base limb anywhere in this treaty, because the Convention has no fixed-base concept at all: Art. 15 (Independent Personal Services) uses a pure 183-day presence test with no fixed base. Art. 12(5) preserves the application of article 4 of Egyptian Law 14 of 1939. There is no effectively-connected carve-out in Article 12 referring PE-connected interest to Article 7, and none in Article 11 either; the 1969 drafting simply does not contain the paragraph that every modern treaty has.

Royalties

Rate	No rate cap — and, more than that, exclusive source-state taxation. Art. 13(1) reads: 'Royalties arising in a Contracting State and paid to a resident of the other Contracting State shall be taxable only in the first-mentioned state.' Not 'may also be taxed', not 'shall not exceed X per cent' — taxable only in the state in which they arise. So an Indian-source royalty paid to an Egyptian resident is taxable in India at full domestic rates and is not taxable in Egypt at all; the residence State's taxing right is excluded outright. This is the reverse of the modern shared-taxation-with-a-cap model and it means the treaty gives an Egyptian royalty recipient nothing by way of Indian rate relief — its only benefit is the removal of Egyptian tax.
Where this comes from	Article 13, paragraph 1

Rate

No rate cap — and, more than that, exclusive source-state taxation. Art. 13(1) reads: 'Royalties arising in a Contracting State and paid to a resident of the other Contracting State shall be taxable only in the first-mentioned state.' Not 'may also be taxed', not 'shall not exceed X per cent' — taxable only in the state in which they arise. So an Indian-source royalty paid to an Egyptian resident is taxable in India at full domestic rates and is not taxable in Egypt at all; the residence State's taxing right is excluded outright. This is the reverse of the modern shared-taxation-with-a-cap model and it means the treaty gives an Egyptian royalty recipient nothing by way of Indian rate relief — its only benefit is the removal of Egyptian tax.

Where this comes from

Article 13, paragraph 1

The royalty definition has A carve-out that must not be truncated. Art. 13(2) covers payments for the use of, or the right to use, any copyright of literary, artistic or scientific work, any patent, trade mark, design or model, plan, secret formula or process, industrial, commercial or scientific equipments, and information concerning industrial, commercial or scientific experience — 'but does not include any royalty or other like amount in respect of the operation of mines, quarries or any other place of extraction of natural resources.' Mineral royalties are therefore outside Article 13; they fall to Article 6 (income from immovable property, which by Art. 6(2) expressly includes 'rights to variable or fixed payments as consideration for the working of, or the right to work, mineral deposits, sources and other natural resources') and under Art. 6(1) are 'taxable only in the Contracting State in which such property is situated'. The practical outcome is the same — exclusive source taxation — but by a different route and under a different article. Note also that the definition does not include cinematograph films: Art. 13(3) deals with them separately — 'rents and royalties arising in a Contracting State in respect of cinematographic films and paid to a resident of the other Contracting State shall be taxable only in the first-mentioned State according to the tax laws of that state' — and expressly extends to rents as well as royalties. Art. 13(4) is a one-off deeming provision: where founders' shares are issued in Egypt as consideration for the rights in para 2 and taxed under article 1 of Egyptian Law 14 of 1939, Article 13 does not apply and article 11 (Dividends) applies instead. Art. 13(5) is the source rule (payer is the State, a sub-division, a local authority or a resident), with no PE deeming override — unlike Art. 12(4).

Fees for technical services

There is no fees-for-technical-services article in this treaty and no FTS limb inside article 13. The word 'technical' appears in the whole instrument only in Art. 21(b), which exempts a 'business or technical apprentice' from tax on remittances from abroad. There is no reference to managerial services, no reference to consultancy services, no 'make available' requirement, no 'fees for included services' and no 'included services'. Verified by full-text search. Consequently there is no make-available test to satisfy and no make-available safe harbour to invoke — the question does not arise. What governs A technical-service fee instead, and why the answer is not the usual one. In the Philippines treaty, which also has no FTS article, a service fee escaping Arts. 7 and 15 lands in a residence-only Other Income article and India gets nothing. The egypt treaty has no such article. Its Article 23 is headed 'income not expressly mentioned' and reads, in its entirety: 'The laws in force in either of the Contracting States will continue to govern assessment and taxation of income in the respective Contracting States except where express provision to the contrary is made in this convention.' That is a saving of domestic law, not a distributive rule. It confers no residence-only treatment and removes no source-State taxing right. So the analysis for a fee paid by an Indian payer to an Egyptian service provider runs: is it within Art. 7 (business profits, taxable in India only through a PE)? If the recipient is an enterprise and there is no PE, Art. 7(1) makes the profits 'taxable only in' Egypt and India is barred. Is it within Art. 15 (independent personal services)? If the recipient is an individual professional, India may tax only if he is present in India for more than 183 days in the previous year, and only to the extent attributable to activities in India. If IT falls within neither, art. 23 leaves indian domestic law in full force and India taxes under s.9(1)(vii) read with s.115A without any treaty restriction. The absence of an FTS article here is therefore not taxpayer-favourable in the way it is under the Philippines treaty; everything turns on whether Art. 7 or Art. 15 captures the payment.

Capital gains on shares

Treatment	Exclusive source-state taxation of share gains, achieved by A deemed-situs rule, and IT is the only treaty in this batch drafted this way. Article 14 has just three paragraphs. Art. 14(1): 'Subject to the provisions of paragraph (3) gains from the sale, exchange or transfer of a capital asset being immovable property, as defined in paragraph (2) of article VI, or movable property shall be taxable only in the contracting state in which such property is situated.' Note three things about that sentence: it covers both immovable and movable property in one rule; it turns entirely on situs, not on residence, permanent establishment or asset composition; and it says 'taxable only', so the taxing right is exclusive to the situs State — the residence State is barred. Art. 14(2) then supplies the situs rule for shares: 'for the purpose of this article the situs of the shares of A company shall be deemed to be in the contracting state where the company is incorporated.' So a gain on shares of an indian-incorporated company is taxable only in india, whoever alienates them; and a gain on shares of an Egyptian-incorporated company is taxable only in Egypt. There is no property-rich test, no percentage, no minimum holding, no listing carve-out, no de minimis, no residual residence-only paragraph and no 365-day look-back (MLI Art. 9(4) has never been applied — there is no synthesised text). Art. 14(3) is the only exception: gains on a ship or aircraft are taxable only in the Contracting State in which the ship or aircraft is registered — a registration test, not a place-of-effective-management test.
Grandfathering	None, and none is possible. There is no shares-acquired-before date, no transition rate and no limitation-of-benefits gateway. The rule has stood unchanged since 1969 — zero amending notifications, no protocol, no MLI. Note the structural point: because Art. 14(1) says 'taxable only in' the situs State, this treaty does not merely permit source taxation of share gains, it excludes residence-State taxation of them. That is the reverse of the Mauritius/Singapore/Cyprus problem and it means Egypt has never been usable as a conduit into Indian shares under this treaty.
Conditions	The only condition anywhere in Article 14 is the incorporation test in para 2 — which is a bright line and requires no valuation, no asset analysis and no holding-period computation. Note what is absent and would be present in a modern article: there is no PE-property paragraph (gains on movable property of a PE are dealt with by the general situs rule in para 1, not by a separate limb), and there is no residual paragraph, so an asset with no ascertainable situs is not expressly provided for.
Where this comes from	Article 14, paragraph 1, 2 and 3

Permanent establishment

Construction or installation PE	More than ninety days — the shortest construction-PE threshold in this batch by A large margin, and it is expressed in days, not months. Art. 5(2)(h) simply includes in the term permanent establishment 'A building site or construction or assembly project which exists for more than ninety days'. Compare Portugal and Hungary at nine months, Malta, the Czech Republic and Turkey at six. Note also what the limb does not cover: there is no reference to an installation project and none to supervisory activities in connection with a site or project. On a literal reading, pure supervision of a third party's construction is outside Art. 5(2)(h) altogether and would have to be tested under Art. 5(1) as a fixed place of business. There is no aggregation wording and MLI Art. 14 has never been applied, so there is no anti-splitting rule.
Service PE	None. There is no service PE in this treaty of any kind — no general services limb, no consultancy limb, no natural-resources services proviso of the Turkish type, and no day threshold for services anywhere in Article 5. Services rendered in India by an Egyptian enterprise create an Indian PE only through a fixed place of business under Art. 5(1)/(2) or through a dependent agent under Art. 5(4). The 183-day test in art. 15 is not A service PE and must not be confused with one: it applies only to an individual rendering professional or similar independent services, it is a presence test rather than a PE test, and it confers a source taxing right only 'to the extent the income is attributable to such services or activities' in that State.
Agency PE	Yes — Art. 5(4), three limbs, and the drafting is 1960s vintage and in places wider than the modern norm: '(i) he has and habitually exercises in that State general authority to negotiate and enter into contracts for or on behalf of the enterprise, unless the activities of the person are limited to the purchase of goods or merchandise for the enterprise' — note the exception is confined to purchasing and does not cross-refer to the whole of the para 3 exclusion list; '(ii) he habitually maintains ... A stock of goods or merchandise ... From which the person regularly delivers goods or merchandise'; or '(iii) he habitually secures orders ... Exclusively or almost exclusively, for the enterprise itself or for the enterprise and other enterprises which are controlled by IT or have A controlling interest in IT'. Limb (iii) reaches group orders but the group is defined narrowly — only enterprises controlled by, or controlling, the enterprise; sister companies under common control are not included, unlike the Turkish and Hungarian formulations. Art. 5(5), the independent-agent exclusion, is the narrowest in the batch and this is easy to miss: 'An enterprise of a Contracting State shall not be deemed to have a permanent establishment in the other Contracting State merely because it carries on business in that other State through A broker of A genuinely independent status.' Only A broker. The usual words 'general commission agent or any other agent of an independent status' are absent. On a literal reading, an independent commission agent or distributor who is not a broker cannot claim the exclusion at all, and must instead show that he falls outside the three limbs of para 4. The qualifier 'genuinely independent' adds a further substance requirement not found in the modern formula.
Where this comes from	Article 5

Art. 5(1) uses 'in which' rather than 'through which': 'a fixed place of business in which the business of the enterprise is wholly or partly carried on' — the pre-1977 OECD formulation. Art. 5(2) is an inclusive list of eight limbs with two unusual entries: '(e) a workshop or A warehouse' — a warehouse simpliciter, with no requirement that storage be provided for others (contrast the Czech and Turkish treaties, which require third-party storage) — and '(g) A permanent sales exhibition'. Limb (f) is 'a mine, a quarry, an oil field or other place of extraction of natural resources', with no duration test. Art. 5(3) (the exclusions) is the shortest in the batch and its omissions are decisive: only four limbs — (a) facilities used solely for storage or display (the word delivery is absent); (b) a stock of goods maintained solely for storage or display (again no delivery); (c) a fixed place solely for purchasing or collecting information; and (d) a fixed place solely for advertising, or for scientific research. There is no processing-by-another-enterprise limb, no general 'any other activity of A preparatory or auxiliary character' limb, and no combination limb. A fixed place of business used for delivery, or for stock-processing, or for any preparatory activity not on the list, is not excluded. This is a much harder exclusion list than any modern treaty and it achieves bilaterally more than MLI Art. 13 Option A would have. There is no insurance PE. Art. 5(6) is the subsidiary rule and IT is one-directional: the fact that a company resident in one State has a subsidiary resident in or doing business in the other State does not of itself make that subsidiary a PE of its parent. Unlike the standard bilateral formula, it says nothing about the parent being a PE of the subsidiary.

Anti-abuse: limitation of benefits, and the MLI

LOB	None. There is no limitation-of-benefits article, no shell or conduit test, no bona fide business test, no listed-company gateway and no expenditure test. And, uniquely in this batch, there is not even A beneficial-ownership condition: the words 'beneficial owner' and 'beneficially owned' appear nowhere in the Convention. Articles 11, 12 and 13 allocate taxing rights by reference to who pays and who is paid, with no enquiry into beneficial entitlement. The Convention runs Art. 25 Non-discrimination, Art. 26 map, Art. 27 Exchange of Information, Art. 28 Diplomatic and Consular Privileges, Art. 29 Entry into force, Art. 30 Termination — and no anti-abuse article of any kind.
PPT	None. No principal purposes test, no main-purpose test in any article, no MLI PPT — because no synthesised text exists for Egypt. This treaty has no general anti-abuse rule and no beneficial-ownership filter. It is, on that measure, the least defended instrument in the batch — weaker even than the Philippines and Turkey treaties, both of which at least require beneficial ownership in their rate articles. In practical terms this matters less than it might, because the treaty concedes India almost nothing to abuse: there is no rate cap on dividends, none on interest, exclusive source taxation of royalties, and exclusive source taxation of share gains. The exposures that remain are on the other side of the ledger — Art. 7(1) barring Indian taxation of Egyptian business profits absent a PE, Art. 6(1) and Art. 14(1) barring Indian taxation of foreign-situs property income and gains, and Art. 24(1) requiring India to exempt (not merely credit) most Egyptian-taxable income of Indian residents. The Indian revenue's only recourse against an abusive structure is domestic law, including Chapter X-A GAAR read with s.90(2A).
Subject to tax	Not as A general condition. There is, however, a narrow subject-to-tax requirement inside the dependent personal services article, which is worth noting because the modern short-stay exemption does not contain it: Art. 16(2)(c) and 16(3)(c) each require, as one of four cumulative conditions for the 183-day employment exemption, that 'the remuneration is subject to [the other State's] tax'. So an Egyptian-resident employee working in India for under 183 days is exempt in India only if the remuneration is actually subject to Egyptian tax — a genuine subject-to-tax condition, and one that the equivalent article in every other treaty in this batch omits. The fourth condition, Art. 16(2)(d)/(3)(d), is also stricter than the modern formula: the remuneration must not be 'deducted in computing profits of an enterprise chargeable to' tax in the host State — a deduction test rather than the usual 'borne by a permanent establishment' test.
Where this comes from	Article none — no LOB or PPT exists; Art. 16(2)(c)/(3)(c) for the employment subject-to-tax condition

No synthesised text for egypt has been identified from the sources used here. There is therefore only one text of this treaty in the sources used here and nothing to reconcile. None of the MLI overlay applies: no anti-treaty-shopping preamble, no principal purposes test, no saving clause, no anti-fragmentation rule, no commissionnaire rule, no 365-day look-back on share gains, no splitting-up-of-contracts rule. Egypt signed the MLI on 7 June 2017 but its ratification position is not evidenced by anything in the sources used here, and no synthesised text has been prepared with India. Until one is, this treaty has no general anti-abuse rule at all — and, unlike every other treaty in this batch, it does not even have the fallback of a beneficial-ownership condition, because Articles 11, 12 and 13 contain no beneficial-ownership requirement of any kind (see below). It is the least defended instrument in the batch.

The protocols, in order

A treaty read without its protocols is a wrong answer.

None. The citation line reads simply 'notification : No. GSR 2363, dated 30-9-1969.' — one notification, one date, no 'as amended by', no 'as corrected by' and no trailing asterisk. This is the oldest treaty in the batch by twenty-five years and IT has never been amended, renegotiated or supplemented in over fifty-six years. One footnote marker appears, attached to the heading of article 8 (printed as '1ARTICLE 8'); the footnote text is not carried in the copy read here but its position, immediately before the Air Transport article, points to the exchange of letters on the designated airlines rather than to any amendment.
There is no protocol. The instrument runs from article 1 to article 30 (Termination) and stops. What takes the place of a protocol is the exchange of letters on Article 8, reproduced in both directions — the Indian note and the Egyptian reply — and made part of the Convention by the express agreement in each ('this note and your reply thereto shall be deemed to be part of the Convention'; 'Your note of today's date and my reply thereto shall, therefore, be part of the Convention'). It deals only with the retrospective airline relief and touches nothing else.
No synthesised text exists, so no MLI change to this treaty is established here. See synthesised_text.

The words themselves

Quoted from the treaty as notified.

Dividends paid by a company which is a resident of India to a resident of the United Arab Republic may be taxed in India.

Article 11, paragraph 1 — this is the ENTIRE paragraph; there is no rate limitation of the treaty as notified.

Royalties arising in a Contracting State and paid to a resident of the other Contracting State shall be taxable only in the first-mentioned State.

Article 13, paragraph 1 of the treaty as notified.

For the purpose of this article the situs of the shares of a company shall be deemed to be in the Contracting State where the company is incorporated.

Article 14, paragraph 2 of the treaty as notified.

a building site or construction or assembly project which exists for more than ninety days

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

An enterprise of a Contracting State shall not be deemed to have a permanent establishment in the other Contracting State merely because it carries on business in that other State through a broker of a genuinely independent status.

Article 5, paragraph 5 of the treaty as notified.

The laws in force in either of the Contracting States will continue to govern assessment and taxation of income in the respective Contracting States except where express provision to the contrary is made in this Convention.

Article 23, paragraph (single unnumbered paragraph — the whole of the article) of the treaty as notified.

but does not include any royalty or other like amount in respect of the operation of mines, quarries or any other place of extraction of natural resources.

Article 13, paragraph 2, closing words of the treaty as notified.

What to watch

The one-sentence summary: this treaty caps nothing. Every other treaty in this batch answers the question 'what is the rate?' with a percentage. Egypt answers it with an allocation. Dividends — no cap. Interest — no cap and no exemptions. Royalties — no cap and exclusive source taxation. FTS — no article at all. Capital gains on shares — exclusive source taxation by deemed situs. For an Egyptian resident receiving Indian-source investment income, the treaty gives no indian rate relief whatsoever; Indian domestic law under s.115A and the Finance Act rates applies in full, and s.90(2) has nothing more beneficial to offer. The treaty's value to an Egyptian taxpayer lies entirely in the elimination article and in Art. 7 — not in the rate articles.
No most-favoured-nation clause. A full-text search of the whole record returned no hit for 'most favoured', 'most-favoured', 'third State' or 'OECD' anywhere in the Convention or the exchange of letters. Nothing is tied to a later Indian treaty; nothing covers scope; there is no protocol in which such a clause could be hidden; and no notification has ever been or could be issued under one. The absence is doubly consequential here because there is no rate to improve and no FTS scope to narrow — an MFN clause, had one existed, would have been the only route to a rate cap at all.
Article 24 is an exemption-method article, not A credit article, and that is rare for india. Art. 24(1) provides that where a resident of one State derives income which under the Convention 'shall be taxable only in' or 'may be taxed in' the other State, the residence State shall — subject to para 2 — 'exempt such income from tax but may, in calculating tax on the remaining income of that person, apply the rate of tax which would have been applicable if the exempted income had not been SO exempted' — exemption with progression, as India's general method under this treaty. Art. 24(2) then carves out a credit for one narrow class: income which 'in accordance with the provisions of articles XI and XII may be taxed' in the other State — i.e. Dividends and interest only — where ordinary credit with the usual proportionate cap applies. So an Indian resident's Egyptian business profits, royalties and capital gains are exempt in India with progression, while Egyptian dividends and interest attract credit. Almost every modern Indian treaty uses credit throughout; this one does not, and the difference changes the Indian computation materially.
Two articles do real work despite looking like boilerplate. Art. 6(1) is exclusive, not shared: 'Income from immovable property shall be taxable only in the Contracting State in which such property is situated' — no 'may be taxed', so the residence State is barred, and by Art. 6(2) the article captures mineral and natural-resource payments and, via Art. 12(3), interest on debts secured by mortgages on real estate. Art. 8 and art. 9 (air transport and shipping) are also drafted as prohibitions rather than allocations, and with a condition that is easy to misread: income from the operation of aircraft or ships by an enterprise of one State 'shall not be taxed in the other contracting state unless the aircraft [or ships] is operated wholly or mainly between places within that other contracting state'. The exemption is lost — entirely, with no cap and no reduction — where the operation is wholly or mainly domestic to the other State. There is no reference to international traffic and no place-of-effective-management test.
Art. 18 (artistes and athletes) has A fifteen-day threshold, which is unusual and very short: source taxation of public entertainers and athletes applies 'only if the personal activities are exercised in the Contracting State for a period or periods in the aggregate exceeding 15 days during the relevant previous year or fiscal year, and only in respect of the income attributable to the personal activities exercised in that state'. Most Indian treaties give the source State an unconditional right over entertainers; this one requires more than fifteen days and then apportions.
Art. 22 (professors, teachers and researchers) is A full exemption for up to two years with no requirement that the remuneration be taxed in the home State and no requirement that the visit be at the invitation of the host institution — 'during a period of temporary residence not exceeding two years at a university, college, technical school or other institution for higher education'.
The instrument is drafted against two legal systems that have both moved on. It refers throughout to egyptian law 14 of 1939 (articles 1, 4, 5, 6, 11 and 36 of it are cited by number), to the united arab republic — a State that ceased to exist under that name in 1971 — and, on the Indian side, to super-tax and to the companies (profits) surtax act 1964, both long repealed. Art. 3(1)(b) resolves the first point by defining 'the term United Arab Republic means egypt'. Art. 2(4) resolves the tax-list point prospectively: the Convention 'shall also apply to any identical or substantially similar taxes which are subsequently imposed in addition to, or in the place of, the existing taxes', and Art. 2(5) requires the competent authorities to notify each other of significant changes at the end of each year. But the numerous provisions keyed to specific articles of Law 14 of 1939 — Art. 11(5) and (6), Art. 12(5), Art. 13(4) and Art. 25(5) — have no such saving and cannot be applied without knowing what replaced them. That is a real limit on this record.
Compared with the philippines treaty, the other FTS-less instrument in this batch, the outcome for service income is opposite. Philippines has a residence-only Other Income article, so a service fee escaping Arts. 7 and 15 is taxable only in the recipient's State. Egypt's Art. 23 is a saving of domestic law, so the same fee is taxable in India under s.9(1)(vii) without treaty restriction. Do not carry the Philippines reasoning across.

What this page does not tell you. The date of entry into force is not stated in the record. The Introduction recites ratification and exchange of instruments without a date, and Art. 29(2) keys everything to that undated exchange. The 1 January 1969 effect date given in this record is derived from the 30-9-1969 notification date, not taken from the sources used here. The Gazette copy of G.S.R. 2363 or the treaty's entry in the Ministry of External Affairs treaty register would settle it. The Gazette page/part reference for G.S.R. 2363 of 30-9-1969 is not given; only the number and date. Note also that the number is given as 'GSR 2363' without the '(E)' suffix used for later notifications. The footnote marked on the heading of article 8 (printed as '1ARTICLE 8') is not carried in the text available here. Its content is not established; its position suggests it relates to the exchange of letters on the designated airlines, but that is an inference. Egypt'S MLI position is not established from the sources used here. The conclusion that no PPT applies rests solely on the absence of a Synthesised Text record. The OECD Depositary listing would settle whether Egypt has ratified and whether India and Egypt have listed each other. The treaty is keyed at many points to named articles of egyptian law 14 of 1939 (arts. 1, 4, 5, 6, 11 and 36) and to nine named Egyptian taxes. Whether those taxes and provisions still exist, and what has replaced them, is a question of Egyptian law that this record does not and cannot answer. Art. 2(4) saves identical or substantially similar successor taxes, but the article-specific cross-references have no equivalent saving. On the Indian side the treaty refers to super-tax and to the surtax under the Companies (Profits) Surtax Act 1964, both repealed. Art. 2(4) would carry the Convention forward to successor taxes, but the record does not say so and no competent-authority notification under Art. 2(5) is reproduced. Art. 5(2)(h) omits 'installation' and omits 'supervisory activities in connection therewith'. Whether pure supervision of a construction project can constitute a PE under this treaty is therefore genuinely open and is not resolved by the text. Art. 5(5) confines the independent-agent exclusion to 'a broker'. Whether that was deliberate or a drafting economy cannot be established from the sources used here, and the point does not appear to have been clarified by any subsequent instrument — there has been none.

The India–Egypt tax treaty