Form 10F Online Is Mandatory, And It Is About to Become Form 41: What NRIs Claiming DTAA Relief at the Bank Need to Do Now

A reader in Dubai called me in February because his bank had deducted Rs 1,87,000 of TDS on a single quarter's NRO fixed deposit interest, at 31.2%, when the India-UAE treaty entitled him to 12.5%. He had a valid UAE Tax Residency Certificate sitting in a drawer. What he did not have was an e-filed Form 10F for the financial year, and the bank's relationship manager had quietly stopped chasing him for it. The treaty rate was his by right. The 31.2% was his by default, because a self-declaration form he had never heard of had become mandatory, online-only, and the gatekeeper between him and his own money.

The 30-second answer: Since October 1, 2023, Form 10F must be filed electronically on the income tax e-filing portal by almost every non-resident claiming a DTAA rate, and a paper form or a TRC alone no longer works. The CBDT opened a no-PAN registration route under "Others" so NRIs without a PAN can register, upload their Tax Residency Certificate, and e-file. The form is valid for one financial year and must reach your bank or payer before they credit income, or they apply full TDS (30% plus surcharge and cess on NRO interest). From April 1, 2026, the Income-tax Act, 2025 renames it Form 41 under Section 159(8) and Rule 75 of the Income-tax Rules, 2026, replacing Sections 90 and 90A. Same substance, new number.

This is a news-analysis of a quiet compliance change that has cost NRIs real money for over two years, and is about to change shape again. This guide assumes you already understand what a DTAA is and why a TRC matters; if not, start with DTAA mechanics: TRC, Form 10F and Section 90. What follows is the part that actually trips people up: why the form silently broke treaty relief at the bank, the exact current process including the no-PAN route, the OTP and signature traps that get filings rejected, and what genuinely changes when Form 10F becomes Form 41 in two weeks' time.

Why a self-declaration form became the thing that breaks your treaty rate

For years, Form 10F was an afterthought. The Income-tax Rules require a non-resident claiming treaty relief to furnish certain particulars: legal status, nationality or country of incorporation, the Tax Identification Number in the home country, the period of residential status, and the address. If your TRC already contained all of those, you did not need Form 10F at all. The trouble is that almost no foreign TRC does. A UAE TRC is a one-line confirmation of residency. A UK certificate of residence, a US Form 6166, a Canadian letter, none of them carry the full Indian checklist. So Form 10F was the gap-filler, and for most NRIs it was always required in substance even when nobody filed it.

What changed was the medium. A CBDT notification in July 2022 mandated electronic filing of Form 10F, and after a transitional reprieve, the online-only rule became hard from October 1, 2023. From that date a wet-ink paper Form 10F handed to your bank carries no weight. The form has to be filed on the income tax e-filing portal, which generates an acknowledgement, and that acknowledgement is what your payer needs in its system.

Here is why this broke things so quietly. The chain that delivers your treaty rate has three links: you hold a current TRC, you e-file Form 10F referencing it, and your bank or payer loads both into its system before it credits the income and runs TDS. Before October 2023, the third link was forgiving. Banks accepted a signed paper declaration. After October 2023, the same paper declaration is worthless, but the bank's interest-payment engine keeps running on its own schedule. If the e-filed acknowledgement is not on file by the bank's internal cut-off, the system defaults to the statutory non-resident rate. On NRO interest that default is 30% plus surcharge and cess, which lands between 31.2% and roughly 39% depending on your income band, against a treaty rate that for most countries is 10% to 15%. Nobody refuses you. The default just does it for them.

Put real numbers on that. Take Anil, a UK-resident NRI, with Rs 12,00,000 of NRO fixed deposit interest in a financial year. The India-UK treaty caps tax on interest at 15%.

With a current TRC and e-filed Form 10F on file before the first credit, the bank deducts 15%, or Rs 1,80,000, across the year. That is the end of it unless his Indian return shows a different liability.

Without the e-filed Form 10F, the bank deducts at 30% plus 4% cess, that is 31.2%, or Rs 3,74,400. The extra Rs 1,94,400 is not lost forever, but to recover it Anil must file an Indian income tax return, claim the excess against his treaty entitlement, and wait for a refund that typically arrives eight to twelve months after year-end. He has, in effect, given the Government of India an interest-free loan of nearly Rs 2 lakh for a year because a form was not filed on time. The treaty rate was always his. The form is what unlocks it at source rather than a year later. The mechanics of cutting NRO TDS this way are in reduce NRO TDS using DTAA, and the refund route, if you miss the window, in TDS for NRIs and how to claim refunds.

The current process, step by step, including the no-PAN route

The portal handles two kinds of filer differently, and confusing them is the most common reason an NRI gets stuck. If you have a PAN, you log in and file Form 10F as a normal taxpayer. If you do not have a PAN, you use a separate registration route that the CBDT opened precisely because the online mandate would otherwise have locked out non-residents who had never needed an Indian PAN.

If you have a PAN. Log in to the e-filing portal with your PAN. Go to e-File, then Income Tax Forms, then File Income Tax Forms. Choose the "Persons not dependent on any source of income" tab, find Form 10F, and click File Now. Select the relevant assessment year, then complete the particulars: your status, the country whose treaty you are claiming, your foreign TIN, the full overseas address, and the period of residential status, which must align with the period your TRC covers. Attach a scanned copy of the TRC. Verify the form, and the portal generates an acknowledgement you can download as a PDF. That PDF is what your bank or payer needs.

If you do not have a PAN. This is the route the October 2023 change made viable, and it matters most for NRIs who only have passive Indian income (interest, dividends, royalties) and never opened a PAN. On the portal's registration page, choose Register, then under taxpayer category select Others, and from the dropdown pick "Non-Residents not holding and not required to have PAN". You then provide:

• Basic details: name, date of birth or date of incorporation, your foreign Tax Identification Number, and country of residence.
• Key person details where the filer is an entity: name, date of birth, TIN and designation of the authorised signatory.
• Contact details: a primary and secondary mobile number, email IDs, and your postal address abroad.
• Attachments: a government photo ID, an address proof, and a copy of your TRC.

Once the account is created and verified, you can file Form 10F under it. Verification for a no-PAN filer is by Electronic Verification Code (EVC) sent to the registered email and mobile, so you do not need a PAN-linked Digital Signature Certificate. A DSC is still accepted and, for entities, often cleaner, but it is not mandatory for the no-PAN individual route.

The single most common failure point is the OTP. The portal accepts a foreign mobile number on registration but is notoriously unreliable at delivering OTPs to non-Indian numbers, and the EVC verification depends on receiving a one-time code. The practical workaround that I give every client is to keep an Indian mobile number on the account, ideally one that stays active on roaming or with a relative, so the OTP and EVC codes actually arrive. If you only have a foreign number, attempt the OTP at off-peak Indian hours and be prepared to retry; many NRIs lose an afternoon to this and conclude, wrongly, that the no-PAN route does not work.

Two more details decide whether the bank accepts your filing. First, the particulars on Form 10F must match the TRC exactly, including the spelling of your name and the residency period. A TRC that covers a calendar year while you file Form 10F for an Indian financial year is the classic mismatch; the periods have to overlap the income you are claiming on. Second, Form 10F is valid for one financial year only. There is no carry-forward. Every April you need a fresh TRC for the new period and a fresh Form 10F filed against it, and you need to push both to your bank before the first interest credit of the year. Treat it as an annual ritual, not a one-time setup.

Here is what the timing looks like in practice. Priya, a US-resident NRI, has NRO interest credited quarterly, with the first credit on June 30. Her bank's internal cut-off for DTAA documents is mid-June. Her US Form 6166 for the 2026 calendar year only became available in March 2026. To get the treaty rate on the June credit, she had to obtain the 6166, e-file Form 10F for FY 2026-27 referencing it, download the acknowledgement, and email it to her relationship manager before mid-June. Miss any link, and the June, and possibly September, credits are taxed at 31.2% with the difference recoverable only on her return. The lesson is that the binding deadline is not a statutory date; it is your bank's quiet quarterly cut-off, and it is weeks earlier than you expect.

Where the country you live in changes the calculus

The Form 10F process is the same everywhere, but whether the effort pays off depends entirely on your treaty and your home-country tax. This is where generic advice goes wrong.

For a UAE resident, Form 10F is the highest-value form you will ever file. The UAE levies no personal income tax, so there is no foreign tax credit to claim there; if you do not capture the Indian treaty rate at source, the tax is simply lost to you. On NRO interest the India-UAE treaty rate is 12.5% against a 31.2%-plus default, and on listed shares the treaty can take the gain to zero, as covered in capital gains tax for NRIs on shares and mutual funds. For a Gulf NRI, an unfiled Form 10F is pure, unrecoverable cost.

For a US, UK or Canada resident, the arithmetic is softer but still real. You will pay tax at home on the same Indian income and claim a foreign tax credit there, so over-deduction in India is not permanently lost, it is a timing and cash-flow problem. But it is a large one. If India withholds 31.2% and your treaty rate is 15%, you have parked the extra with the Indian exchequer for a year, and your home-country credit only ever matches what you should have paid, not what you over-paid. The over-deduction still has to be chased through an Indian refund. So even where a credit exists, filing Form 10F to get the right rate at source is worth the afternoon it costs.

There is also a status nuance. If you are RNOR (resident but not ordinarily resident) in a transition year, your treaty position and your need for Form 10F can differ from a settled non-resident's, because some of your foreign income escapes Indian tax under RNOR rules while your residency for treaty purposes is being established. In that year, get the position confirmed rather than assuming the form applies the same way. The broader framework is in DTAA relief for NRIs.

What actually changes when Form 10F becomes Form 41

This is the news inside the news. The Income-tax Act, 2025 replaces the Income-tax Act, 1961 with effect from April 1, 2026, which is two weeks out as I write this. With it, the treaty machinery is renumbered. The relief that has lived in Sections 90 and 90A for a generation moves to Section 159(8) of the new Act, and the rule that prescribed Form 10F is replaced by Rule 75 of the Income-tax Rules, 2026. The form itself is renamed and renumbered from Form 10F to Form 41.

Be honest about what this is and is not. It is not a new compliance burden or a change in who qualifies for treaty relief. The substance carries over almost unchanged: a non-resident claiming a DTAA rate still files an online, TRC-backed self-declaration, still annually, still before the payer deducts. The new Form 41 is structured into parts covering tax-residency and foreign TIN details, the nature of the Indian income (salary, interest, dividends, capital gains, royalty, business income), and the specific DTAA and treaty article under which relief is claimed, which is essentially the same information Form 10F asked for, organised more explicitly. A TRC remains mandatory. The no-PAN registration route carries over.

What changes is everything that references the old form by name or section, and that is where NRIs and, frankly, some bank back-offices will trip. The cut-over is by date of income, not date of filing:

• For income arising up to March 31, 2026, you use Form 10F, citing the 1961 Act. A Form 10F you have already filed for FY 2025-26 remains valid for that year; the new rules do not retrospectively void it.
• For income arising on or after April 1, 2026, you use Form 41, citing Section 159(8) and Rule 75.

So an NRI with NRO interest credited on, say, June 30, 2026 must file Form 41, not Form 10F, even though Form 10F is what worked for the credit a year earlier. The income tax department's own FAQs and guidance notes on the 2026 rules confirm that filings made under the old forms before the cut-over stay valid, while new filings for the new year use the new numbers.

The closing the practical loop on this matters. When you go through your annual ritual in April 2026, three things on your paperwork must update together: the form number (Form 41), the section you cite to the bank (Section 159(8), not 90), and the rule reference (Rule 75). Send your bank the Form 41 acknowledgement for FY 2026-27, and if a relationship manager insists on a "Form 10F" out of habit, point them to the new rule. Expect a few weeks of confusion at payer back-offices in April and May 2026 as systems and templates catch up; the NRIs who get the right rate from the first credit will be the ones who filed Form 41 early and chased their bank rather than waiting to be asked. The wider impact of the new Act on NRIs is in the Income-tax Act 2025 and its NRI impact.

Here is the transition in one frame. Rajesh, a UK NRI, files annually for his NRO interest.

Income credited	Form to file	Section to cite	Rule
Quarter ending Mar 31, 2026	Form 10F	Section 90	old Rule 21AB
Quarter ending Jun 30, 2026	Form 41	Section 159(8)	Rule 75

Same treaty, same 15% rate, same TRC discipline. Only the labels on the paperwork change at the April 1 line. If his bank applies 31.2% to the June credit because its template still says "Form 10F required" and rejects his Form 41, that is a back-office error to escalate, not a change in his entitlement.

Edge cases

The TRC that does not cover the right period. This is the quiet killer. A UAE or US TRC issued on a calendar-year basis will not, on its face, cover an Indian financial year (April to March). The portal and the bank both want the Form 10F residency period to align with the income you are claiming on. If your TRC covers calendar 2026, it overlaps both FY 2025-26 and FY 2026-27. The safe practice is to file Form 10F (or Form 41 from April) for each financial year against whichever TRC validly covers that period, and where a TRC straddles two financial years, keep both years' filings consistent with it. A bank that sees a period mismatch will default to full TDS.

Dividends, not just interest. Since the 2020 shift to classical dividend taxation, dividends paid to NRIs suffer TDS, and the treaty can cut the rate, often to 10% to 15%, but only if Form 10F and a TRC are on file with the registrar or company before the dividend is paid. The same online mandate and the same Form 41 transition apply. Many NRIs file diligently for FD interest and forget dividends entirely, then find 20%-plus withheld. See tax on NRO interest for the income side and the same DTAA discipline that applies to dividends.

No-PAN filers and the refund problem. The no-PAN route lets you file Form 10F and get the treaty rate at source. But if over-deduction still happens, claiming a refund effectively requires filing a return, and filing a return without a PAN is awkward. For an NRI with recurring, material Indian income, the honest answer is often that getting a PAN is worth it despite the no-PAN route existing, because it makes refunds and return-filing straightforward. The no-PAN route is a genuine relief for one-off or small income; it is not a reason to avoid a PAN if you have ongoing Indian income.

DSC versus EVC for entities. Individuals on the no-PAN route verify by EVC. Foreign companies and entities frequently need a Digital Signature Certificate obtained in India to verify cleanly, and the authorised signatory's details must match. If you are filing on behalf of a non-individual, sort the DSC out well before the deadline; it is not a same-day task.

The closing read

The honest read is that Form 10F is the most expensive form NRIs ignore, and the upcoming rename to Form 41 will catch out everyone who treats it as a one-time chore rather than an annual one. The form is not optional, it is not satisfied by holding a TRC, and since October 2023 it cannot be done on paper. The cost of getting it wrong is not a penalty; it is 31.2% withheld instead of 12.5% or 15%, and a year-long wait to get the difference back through a refund.

So for most NRIs with recurring Indian income, treat this as a fixed April routine: obtain or renew your TRC for the new period as soon as your home tax authority issues it, e-file the form against it, download the acknowledgement, and push it to your bank and to any company paying you dividends before the first credit of the year, well ahead of the bank's quiet quarterly cut-off. From April 1, 2026, file Form 41 under Section 159(8) and Rule 75, not Form 10F, and update what you tell your bank accordingly; the entitlement is identical, only the labels move. If you are a Gulf resident, this is the single highest-return piece of paperwork you will file all year, because there is no foreign tax credit to rescue you if you miss it. If you have only a small one-off Indian receipt and no PAN, the no-PAN route is genuinely usable; if you have ongoing material Indian income, get a PAN anyway so refunds and returns are not a fight. The exception who should pay a professional rather than rely on this guide is the foreign company or trust filing through a DSC, or anyone whose TRC period does not cleanly cover the Indian financial year, because that mismatch is where the rate quietly defaults to full.

Related guides

• DTAA mechanics: TRC, Form 10F and Section 90
• DTAA relief for NRIs
• Reduce NRO TDS using your DTAA
• TDS for NRIs and how to claim refunds
• Tax on NRO interest
• Capital gains tax for NRIs on shares and mutual funds
• The Income-tax Act 2025 and its NRI impact
• All News and analysis
• All Taxation guides
• All Banking guides

This guide is educational and general in nature. It is not individual tax advice. The online filing mechanics, the no-PAN route and the Form 10F to Form 41 transition described here reflect rules in force as of March 2026, and the Income-tax Act, 2025 takes effect from April 1, 2026, so portal screens, form numbers and bank procedures may change. Confirm your specific position, especially TRC period alignment and any refund or PAN question, with a qualified chartered accountant before you rely on a treaty rate.