UPSC Prelims 2022— Question 8

This question belongs to Economy and tests Indirect Transfer Taxation. The economic principle must be read in the institutional and policy context used in the question. UPSC often tests whether an apparently familiar term is being applied to the correct mechanism, authority or balance-sheet category. Option D is the keyed answer because A foreign company transfers shares and such shares derive their substantial value from assets located in India is the combination or identification that satisfies the conditions in the question. A useful way to solve the question is to separate the individual propositions from the answer-code combinations. A statement can look broadly reasonable while still being incorrect because it uses an absolute term, assigns a function to the wrong institution, confuses two related concepts, or places a feature in the wrong region or period. The keyed response should therefore be treated as the outcome of checking each proposition rather than as a memory-only exercise. Option A: An Indian company investing in a foreign enterprise and paying taxes to the foreign country on the profits arising out of its investment — this is not the correct choice. It fails the question's test because it does not represent the required combination, institution, location, mechanism or historical association. The distractor is plausible only if a related concept is confused with the one actually asked. Option B: A foreign company investing in India and paying taxes to the country of its base on the profits arising out of its investment — this is not the correct choice. It fails the question's test because it does not represent the required combination, institution, location, mechanism or historical association. The distractor is plausible only if a related concept is confused with the one actually asked. Option C: An Indian company purchases tangible assets in a foreign country and sells such assets after their value increases and transfers the proceeds to India — this is not the correct choice. It fails the question's test because it does not represent the required combination, institution, location, mechanism or historical association. The distractor is plausible only if a related concept is confused with the one actually asked. Option D: A foreign company transfers shares and such shares derive their substantial value from assets located in India — this is the correct choice under the final key. It matches the relevant Indirect Transfer Taxation principle and satisfies the question's wording. The exam-oriented takeaway is to identify the governing fact first and only then map it to the answer code. This reduces errors caused by choosing an option because one individual statement appears familiar. For database use, the classification and explanation should be read together: the subject gives the broad domain, the topic identifies the recurring UPSC theme, and the subtopic records the precise knowledge point tested. This also makes the question useful for later topic-wise search and revision.