You go to transfer money abroad — for your child’s university fees, a foreign stock purchase, or a tour package booking — and the bank tells you it is deducting tax at the time of transfer. This is Tax Collected at Source (TCS) on foreign remittances under the Liberalised Remittance Scheme (LRS), and since October
Indian startups going global — setting up a subsidiary in Delaware, incorporating a holding company in Singapore, or entering a joint venture with a foreign partner — are making overseas investments under FEMA, whether they realise it or not. The 2022 overhaul of India’s overseas investment framework introduced clearer rules, but the compliance obligations are
If you earn income from India while living abroad, two countries have an interest in taxing that income: India, because the income originates there, and your country of residence, because you are a tax resident there. Without any agreement between the two governments, you could end up paying tax twice on the same rupee. That
When a parent in India gifts money to a child living abroad, or when an NRI inherits property in India after a parent passes away, two separate legal frameworks come into play — the Income Tax Act for the question of tax, and FEMA for the question of whether the transfer is permitted at all
If you have ever tried to send money abroad from India — or received a call from an Indian payer asking for your tax residency documents before they transfer funds to you — you have encountered the Form 15CA and 15CB requirement. These two documents exist because Indian law requires the payer to account for
NRIs frequently assume that because the money is theirs — earned in India, taxed in India — they can move it abroad whenever they want. In practice, repatriation of funds from India is a regulated process under FEMA, and the account type, the source of funds, and whether Indian taxes have been settled all determine
Many founders believe that once a foreign investor transfers money to the company’s bank account, the hard part is done. It is not. Under India’s foreign exchange law, receiving foreign investment triggers a specific chain of filings and timelines, and missing any of them exposes the company to penalties under FEMA, regardless of how clean
You have been a non-resident for a few years and you want to put money to work back home — in a fixed deposit, some equity, perhaps a mutual fund. The investment part is straightforward. The tax part is where most NRIs trip up. This guide covers the most common NRI investment options in India,
The Foreign Exchange Management Act — FEMA — is the law that governs every cross-border money movement involving India. Yet most individuals who deal with it regularly — NRIs remitting to family, residents sending money abroad for education, professionals receiving foreign payments — know it only as “the rule the bank keeps asking about.” FEMA
Many returning NRIs encounter a confusing moment: their bank insists they must close their NRE account because they are now “FEMA resident,” while their CA tells them they are still a non-resident for income tax purposes. Both are correct — they are describing the same person under two different Acts with two different definitions. Residential
