Qatar slaps Rs 239 crore tax penalty on L&T

India’s construction and engineering giant Larsen & Toubro (L&T) has been slapped with two penalties of Rs 111.31 crore and Rs 127.64 crore by Qatar‘s income tax authorities for alleged variation in the income declared by the company compared with the assessment of the authority, the company said in a stock exchange filing on Friday.

The penalties, which add up to Rs 238.9 crore, have been imposed for the tax assessment period between April 2016 to March 2017 and April 2017 to March 2018. “An appeal has been filed against the levy of this penalty as the company believes it is arbitrary and unjustified,” L&T said.

The company said that it is “reasonably confident of a favourable outcome at the appellate level“, adding that no material adverse impact is envisaged on the financial, operations or other activities of the company.

The Gulf region is a major market for L&T, accounting for as much as 41 per cent of its order inflow in the April-September half of the current financial year. The orders worked out to 32 per cent of its Rs 4,50,700 crore order book as of September-end.