Three ways Article 5 is usually argued
A fixed place. Article 5(1) is a fixed place of business through which the enterprise's business is carried on. The list in Article 5(2) includes an office, a branch and a place of management. A building or construction site, or supervisory work on it, counts only if it continues for more than nine months.
Services. Article 5(2)(i) is the furnishing of services, including consultancy, through employees or other personnel, for the same project or a connected project, for periods adding up to more than nine months within any twelve-month period.
An agent. Article 5(4) treats an enterprise as having a permanent establishment if someone in India, other than an independent agent, habitually concludes contracts for it. Article 5(5) keeps out a broker or other independent agent acting in the ordinary course of their business. An agent who works wholly or almost wholly for that one enterprise is not treated as independent.
Storage, display, delivery, purchasing, or a preparatory office is excluded by Article 5(3), if that is all the place does.
What the Hyatt judgment decided
Hyatt International Southwest Asia Ltd., a UAE company, had a long hotel-operating agreement for Indian hotels. On 24 July 2025 the Supreme Court held that it had a fixed-place permanent establishment in India under the India-UAE treaty. The judgment describes pervasive and enforceable control: appointing and supervising the general manager, policies, pricing, branding, bank accounts, and assigning staff without the owner's consent, with a continuous and functional presence. It held that exclusive possession of a room was not required, following the Court's earlier Formula One reasoning, where the space was at the enterprise's disposal and the business was carried on through it. Commentaries often shorten this to 'continuous and substantive control'. The holding to rely on is the one in the judgment.
Use the judgment for that kind of fact. A UAE consultancy that never controls an Indian site is not Hyatt. The judgment does not rewrite Article 5(2)(i). The nine-month service count is still the service count.
A different question, whether a cost-plus Indian subsidiary creates a permanent establishment for its foreign parent, is already on the subsidiary page. Do not mix the two.
What a permanent establishment changes
Article 7 then lets India tax the profits attributable to that permanent establishment, as if it were a separate enterprise. It does not, by itself, tax the UAE company's whole worldwide profit. Attribution still has to be done.
The company can also have Indian compliance once a permanent establishment is found: a return, and withholding on payments India can tax. The withholding section for a payment to a non-resident is section 195 (old Act). We do not state a replacement number.
If the only issue is an Indian customer deducting tax on one invoice, and nobody has a presence in India, start with the fees-for-technical-services page.