Buyers and sellers of companies are clashing over how long they are willing to take responsibility for future tax liabilities, after the Centre allowed the tax department more time to relook at old transactions. This has emerged as a headwind for private equity (PE) players, in particular. It comes amid a record number of PE-backed mergers and acquisitions (M&As) over the last two years. PE funds are essentially schemes, which take money from a number of rich investors and use it to buy large stakes in companies. Sometimes, they buy out the existing owner. Funds were doing as many as five such buyout transactions a week in 2019 and 2020, according to data from London Stock Exchange Group deal tracker Refinitiv. Both years marked a record in the number (281) of such transactions.