Most of the $1 billion in taxes that PhonePe owed for moving its base to India was paid by Walmart.
Walmart Inc. said late Wednesday that it had already paid most of the nearly $1 billion in taxes owed to the Indian government after the headquarters of the digital payments company PhonePe, which the U.S. retailer owns through Flipkart, moved from Singapore to India.
In 2018, Walmart (NYSE:WMT) bought a controlling stake in India’s biggest online store, Flipkart, which gave it ownership of PhonePe. Last month, the company said that it had finished separating PhonePe from Flipkart. It also said that it would still own the majority of both companies.
“Walmart has already paid most of the 78 billion rupees ($943,01 million) in capital gains taxes that were due after PhonePe investors sold their stake in the Singapore entity and invested in the Indian entity after the domicile change,” a source with direct knowledge of the matter told Reuters.
According to the source, Tiger Global, which had already invested in PhonePe, did not have to pay the tax.
Walmart didn’t tell me anything else about the payment. On Thursday, Reuters sent an email to PhonePe asking for a comment, but PhonePe didn’t answer right away.
Moneycontrol said last year that PhonePe was raising money in a round led by General Atlantic. The company was valued at $12 billion. In December 2020, the fintech company had a market cap of about $5.5 billion.
Bloomberg News said before that Walmart and other investors in PhonePe would have to pay almost $1 billion after the company changed where it was based.
$1 equals 82.7140 Indian rupees
