Indian commerce secretary, Anup Wadhawan, has publicly dismissed a US Trade Representative (USTR) investigation, which describes India’s 2 percent levy on foreign e-commerce firms as discriminatory against American companies such as Facebook, Google and Amazon.

Amazon has been fighting a high-profile battle for Indian market share with local e-commerce players such as Walmart-backed Flipkart, and its subsidiary Myntra, which currently leads in the fashion e-commerce space.

By the end of this year, it is expected that more than 900 million Indian consumers will be online, with the e-commerce market as a whole predicted to grow to $84 billion according to a Deloitte and Retail Association of India report.

“We do not agree with [the report’s] conclusion,” Wadhawan was quoted as saying by local news agencies. ”Basically, if there is an economic benefit from a certain jurisdiction then there has to be some taxation in that jurisdiction... [If] you have billions of dollars of revenue in a certain jurisdiction, you have to pay taxes,” he added.