The Section 197 Lower TDS Certificate: How NRIs Use Form 13 to Stop Over-Withholding on a Property Sale

You sold a flat in Pune for Rs 1,50,00,000. Your actual capital gain was Rs 30,00,000, and the tax on that gain is about Rs 4,48,500. Yet the buyer wired you Rs 1,27,57,500 and sent Rs 22,42,500 to the Income Tax Department, because they deducted TDS on the full sale value, not on your gain. That difference of nearly Rs 18 lakh is your own money, parked with the government, and you will not see it again until your return is filed and processed the following year.

This is not a glitch. It is exactly how Section 195 is built to work for non-residents, and it is the single most expensive cash-flow trap an NRI hits in India. The fix is statutory, and on a property sale it is almost always worth the effort: a lower or nil deduction certificate under Section 197, applied for on Form 13 through the TRACES portal. Get it before completion and the buyer deducts on your gain, not your sale value. Get it after, and you are queuing for a refund.

The 30-second answer: A Section 197 lower or nil deduction certificate is the NRI's main tool to stop TDS over-withholding at source. You apply on Form 13 through the TRACES portal, submitting your estimated income, a tax computation, your last few ITRs, and the PAN and TAN of each deductor. A jurisdictional Assessing Officer reviews it under Rule 28AA and, if satisfied, issues a certificate naming a reduced rate for named deductors up to a stated threshold. It matters most on a property sale, where without it the buyer deducts roughly 14.95% TDS on the entire sale value instead of on the actual gain, the difference being Rs 15 to 20 lakh on a typical flat. The disposal instruction is 30 days from the end of the month the complete application is received, though 15 to 45 days is typical. It beats waiting for a refund because you keep your cash instead of lending it to the department at 0.5% a month for most of a year.

This guide is part of our NRI tax-filing series. For the full picture on putting your return together and the wider set of TDS levers, start with the NRI ITR filing guide for AY 2026-27 and the TDS for NRIs guide, then come back here for the Form 13 detail.

This guide goes deep on one lever: the Section 197 certificate. Why the default is set too high, who is eligible, exactly how the Form 13 application runs on TRACES, what documents the officer actually tests, how long it takes, how long the certificate lasts, why for a property sale it beats waiting for a refund, and what changes on April 1, 2026 when Form 13 becomes Form 128 under a new section number. Two situations carry rupee numbers, a property sale and an NRO deposit, and an Edge cases section covers the things that quietly derail applications.

The default TDS is high by design, and the buyer carries the blame

Start with the mechanism, because the certificate only makes sense once you see why over-withholding is wired in rather than accidental.

Almost every payment to a non-resident that is chargeable to tax in India runs through Section 195, the catch-all provision for TDS on any sum, other than salary, paid to a non-resident. Section 195 carries none of the comfortable thresholds residents enjoy. There is no Rs 50,000 interest cushion under Section 194A, no rent floor under Section 194-I. Deduction begins at the first rupee.

The deeper problem is who carries the legal risk, and it is not you. The person paying you, your bank, your tenant, the buyer of your flat, is personally liable under Section 201 if they under-deduct, and can be treated as an assessee-in-default for the shortfall plus interest. So they deduct at the highest defensible rate. They cannot see your total income, your deductions, your indexed cost of acquisition, or whether a treaty rate applies, and they have no incentive to take that risk on your behalf. Faced with that uncertainty they over-collect and leave you to sort out the refund. On a property sale this hardens into a specific habit: the buyer deducts on the full sale consideration because that is the only number they can see on the sale deed, while your gain, the figure that actually drives the tax, lives in documents they have never seen.

That asymmetry is the entire reason Section 197 exists. The law accepts that the default is blunt, so it gives you a way to prove your real position to the department in advance and have an instruction issued that the deductor can rely on. Once the Assessing Officer signs off, the deductor is protected, because they are deducting at a rate the department itself certified, not one you asserted. That protection is what unlocks the lower deduction. The buyer is not doing you a favour; they are following a government order that shields them.

Keep one frame throughout. TDS is a prepayment, not the final tax. Your final tax is computed on your return, on actual income after deductions and treaty relief. TDS is money held against that bill. If the prepayment exceeds the bill, you get the difference back. The certificate does not change a rupee of your tax. It changes how much is taken upfront, so the prepayment lands near the bill instead of dwarfing it.

Where the over-withholding actually hurts, in descending order of pain

The certificate is worth applying for in three recurring situations, and they are not equal. Rank them by how much cash is frozen, because that is what decides whether the paperwork is worth it.

On a property sale, the deduction is on the wrong base, and that is what costs the most. When an NRI sells immovable property, the buyer deducts under Section 195. For a long-term holding, property held more than 24 months, the gain is taxed at 12.5% plus surcharge and cess after the July 23, 2024 changes, which with a 15% surcharge band and 4% cess stacked on works out to an all-in rate of roughly 14.95% on the gain. The rate is reasonable. The base is the disaster. Unless you hand the buyer a certificate first, they apply that 14.95% to the entire sale consideration, because they cannot verify your gain. On a Rs 1.5 crore sale that is the difference between TDS of about Rs 22,42,500 and TDS of about Rs 4,48,500. (Short-term property, held 24 months or less, is worse still: it is taxed at slab rates, and the buyer often deducts the full 30%-plus all-in on the whole value.) The end-to-end sale is covered in selling property in India as an NRI; the point here is narrow and absolute. Get the certificate before completion.

NRO interest and rent are the second tier, where the deduction ignores your slab and your deductions. Interest on an NRO account or NRO fixed deposit is fully taxable in India and deducted at a flat 31.2% (30% plus 4% cess) under Section 195, with surcharge stacking on above Rs 50 lakh. The bank applies that flat rate regardless of your actual slab, so if your total India income sits in a low band, your real tax may be a fraction of 31.2% and the rest is over-withheld. The detail is in tax on NRO interest. Rent paid to an NRI landlord is deducted at the same 31.2% under Section 195, with no threshold and, crucially, on the gross rent, before the 30% standard deduction under Section 24(a) and before any home-loan interest. Your taxable rental income is far lower than the gross, so 31.2% on gross substantially over-collects. A certificate tells the tenant to deduct on the net figure. See tax on Indian rental income for NRIs.

For interest, dividends and rent there is a parallel route worth knowing before you reach for Form 13: a DTAA treaty rate, claimed with a Tax Residency Certificate and Form 10F handed straight to the deductor, can cut withholding at source without any application to an officer, and it carries no surcharge or cess on top of the treaty rate. We compare the two below and in reduce NRO TDS using DTAA. The treaty route does not help on a property sale, where India retains taxing rights under every treaty, which is exactly why Form 13 is close to essential there and optional elsewhere.

Eligibility is outcome-based, and the officer is bound by four factors

There is no special carve-out you need to qualify for and no minimum income. Any person, resident or non-resident, whose total income justifies a deduction lower than the default rate can apply under Section 197. The test the Assessing Officer applies, under Rule 28AA(2) of the Income Tax Rules, is whether your existing and estimated tax liability justifies the rate you are asking for.

Rule 28AA tells the officer how to fix the rate, and it is a closed list of four factors, not open-ended discretion: the tax payable on your estimated income for the relevant previous year; the tax payable on the assessed, returned or estimated income of the last four previous years; your existing liability under the Act; and the advance tax, TDS and TCS already paid for the year up to the date of application. The rate on the certificate is meant to approximate your actual effective tax rate on the income in question, so the deduction lands close to your real bill rather than far above it. This is worth knowing because officers occasionally overreach. Courts have held that under Rule 28AA the officer cannot, for example, sit in judgment on the profitability of a transaction or reject an application purely because a disputed demand exists against you; the four factors are the boundary. If your certificate is refused on grounds outside that list, that is a position worth contesting rather than accepting.

A few eligibility points that specifically trip up NRIs. You must hold a PAN, and it must be active, not inoperative, because without a valid PAN you cannot register on TRACES and, separately, TDS defaults to the higher 20% under Section 206AA. A PAN that has gone inoperative over an unlinked Aadhaar is treated as no PAN at all, so the 20% floor bites even where a certificate or treaty would otherwise allow less. You apply for specified income from specified deductors: the certificate is not a blanket "tax me less" order, it names the deductor by PAN and TAN, the nature of income, the rate, and a threshold amount, so a certificate for your property buyer does not cover your bank, and the reverse. And for a nil certificate rather than merely lower, you generally have to show that no tax is finally payable on that income, typically because reinvestment relief under Section 54 or 54F will wipe out the gain. A nil certificate is a higher bar and the officer scrutinises it harder, because they are certifying that nothing at all is due.

How the Form 13 application runs on TRACES

The application is entirely online, on the TRACES portal (the TDS Reconciliation Analysis and Correction Enabling System), and has been faceless and digital since the October 2018 notification. The sequence is straightforward; the failures are almost always in the inputs, not the steps.

You first register on TRACES as a Taxpayer using your PAN, a one-time step distinct from the main e-filing portal even though both use the same PAN. Once logged in, raise a request under the Statements or Forms tab, select Request for Form 13, and work through the on-screen checklist. Choose the relevant provision, which for an NRI's income is Section 195, and enter your residential status, the financial year, and the nature of income. The form auto-populates your basic details from your PAN; verify them rather than trusting them.

The two screens that decide your fate are the deductor details and the income computation. For each deductor the certificate is to cover, enter their PAN and TAN, the estimated amount payable to you, and the rate you are requesting. For a property sale this is the buyer, so you need the buyer's TAN in hand before you start, not as an afterthought. Then fill the prescribed templates for your estimated income for the year and your computed tax liability. For a property sale this is where the capital-gains workings go: sale consideration, cost of acquisition (indexed where the property predates the indexation cut-off), the resulting gain, and the tax on it. This computation is the heart of the application, because it is the number the officer tests against Rule 28AA. A sloppy or unsupported gain is the single most common reason an application stalls.

Attach the supporting documents (covered next), then submit and verify. Verification is by Digital Signature Certificate (DSC), EVC, or mobile OTP, and for NRIs the DSC route is usually the cleanest, because EVC and Aadhaar-OTP can be awkward from abroad. The application then routes to your jurisdictional Assessing Officer in the International Taxation ward, not your home-PAN ward, for review. The officer may raise queries through the portal; answer them promptly, because the clock effectively pauses on an incomplete application. Once approved, the certificate is generated on TRACES with a unique number, the approved rate, the named deductors, the threshold amount, and the validity period. Download it, give a copy to each deductor, and they deduct at the certified rate and quote the certificate number when filing their TDS return on Form 27Q (the return for TDS on payments to non-residents, not the resident-seller Form 26QB).

A note on naming, because it is genuinely in flux from this year. Under the new Income Tax Act 2025, effective April 1, 2026, the lower-deduction certificate machinery moves from Section 197 to Section 395, Form 13 becomes Form 128, and the governing rule becomes Rule 213 of the Income Tax Rules 2026. The substance, an application on TRACES tested on your estimated tax, is unchanged, and the CBDT has confirmed that a certificate already issued under old Section 197 for the projected receivables of Tax Year 2026-27 stays valid for payments made on or after April 1, 2026. So if you applied under Form 13 for a sale completing in the new year, you do not need to re-apply; if you are starting fresh after April 1, 2026, you will see Form 128 and Section 395. Treat them as the same lever under new labels.

The documents the officer actually tests

The application stands or falls on the supporting documents, because you are asking the officer to certify a lower rate on the strength of your own numbers. Have these ready before you open the form, not scrambled together after a query lands:

• Estimated income statement for the current financial year, on the prescribed template, covering all your India income, not only the income the certificate is for.
• Income tax returns for the last three to four years, with computations and acknowledgements, which establish your filing history and feed the Rule 28AA four-year look-back.
• Form 26AS for the relevant years, showing the TDS already credited against your PAN.
• The computation of the income in question. For a property sale: the agreement to sell, the original purchase deed, proof of the cost of acquisition, and the indexed-cost working. For rent: the lease and the rent computation net of the Section 24 deductions. For interest: the deposit details and the interest projection.
• Deductor details: the PAN and TAN of each deductor, the buyer, tenant or bank.
• PAN card and proof of non-resident status where the officer asks for it.
• For a nil certificate based on reinvestment, evidence of the planned Section 54 or 54F reinvestment, a booking agreement or a Capital Gains Account Scheme deposit plan, so the officer can see the gain will genuinely be sheltered.

The single most common reason applications drag is an incomplete or unconvincing income computation. If the capital-gains working is loose or the cost of acquisition is unsupported, the officer queries it, and every query adds weeks. This is the part most NRIs sensibly hand to a chartered accountant who has filed NRI property certificates before, because a clean computation on the first pass is worth more than any other single thing you can do to speed the certificate up.

How long it takes, and the timing rule that decides everything

The instruction to officers is that a complete Form 13 application should be disposed of within 30 days from the end of the month in which it is received. So an application complete in all respects in early April should, on the official timeline, be decided by the end of May. In practice, expect 15 to 45 days from submission for a clean NRI filing, and longer if the officer raises queries or a document is missing. The phrase "complete in all respects" carries the weight here: an application missing a deed or carrying an unsupported computation does not start the clock cleanly, because the officer can treat it as incomplete and ask for more, and the calendar resets.

The rule that actually matters is on a property sale, and it is unforgiving. Start the Form 13 application four to six weeks before you expect the sale to complete. TDS is deducted at the moment of payment or credit, whichever is earlier. If the buyer pays you the consideration before your certificate exists and is in their hands, they are legally obliged to deduct at the full default rate, certificate or no certificate, because the certificate only takes effect once it is issued and handed over. There is no retrospective relief at the deduction stage. Miss the window and the lever you wanted to pull at source collapses into a refund claim after the year ends. Build the certificate timeline into the sale timeline from the very start, and where you can, structure the payment so completion follows certificate issuance rather than racing it.

How long the certificate lasts, and the trap in the threshold

A Section 197 certificate is valid for the financial year for which it is granted, from the date of issue to the last day of that financial year, or until the officer cancels it before year-end, whichever comes first. It is not open-ended. If you have recurring NRO interest and want lower deduction year on year, you apply afresh each financial year.

For a property sale, the certificate is usually issued for the specific transaction with the named buyer in the financial year of the sale. It covers that deductor and that income, and nothing else. If the sale slips into the next financial year, or you switch to a second buyer, the certificate must name the right year and the right deductor, so check the named details against the actual transaction before completion. The threshold is the part people miss: the certificate states a threshold amount of income up to which the lower rate applies, and if the payment exceeds that amount, the excess can be deducted at the normal rate. Make sure the consideration on the certificate matches the agreed sale price exactly, or the buyer over-deducts on the slice above the certified figure and you have reopened the very gap you applied to close.

Why the certificate beats waiting for a refund

You can always skip Form 13, let the full TDS be deducted, and claim the excess back by filing ITR-2 the following year. The money is recoverable either way, so why bother? Three reasons, and they are about cash, not tax.

The first is cash flow, and it is the whole point. On a property sale, the gap between full-value TDS and gain-based TDS runs to Rs 15 to 20 lakh on a single transaction. Without the certificate that money leaves your hands at completion and does not return until your return is filed, which for AY 2026-27 means after July 31, 2026, and then processed, typically another 20 to 45 days, longer where capital gains are involved. You can be out of pocket by Rs 18 lakh for ten months or more, money you cannot deploy, cannot remit, and cannot earn a real return on while it sits with the department.

The second is that the refund earns thin interest. When excess TDS is refunded, the department pays interest under Section 244A at 0.5% per month, which is 6% a year, and only from April 1 of the assessment year (or the filing date) to the date of refund. That is partial compensation and well below what the same money would earn in an Indian fixed deposit, an FCNR deposit, or anything deployed offshore. You are effectively lending the government a large sum at a below-market rate for the better part of a year, and the Income Tax Bill 2025 leaves this 0.5% rate untouched, so it is not about to improve.

The third is friction. Large refunds, especially on property transactions, attract scrutiny and processing delays. A mismatch between your claimed TDS and Form 26AS, common when the buyer misquotes your PAN on the Form 27Q, can stall the refund entirely until corrected, and correcting a deductor's TDS return from abroad is its own slow saga. Avoiding the over-deduction in the first place sidesteps all of it.

The honest counterpoint, developed in the closing read, is that for small amounts the certificate is not worth it. The application takes effort and usually a CA fee, and for a few thousand rupees of over-withheld NRO interest the refund route is simply less hassle. The certificate earns its keep when the over-withholding is large, which in practice means property sales and substantial rent.

Put real numbers on a property sale

Take Arjun, an NRI in London. In FY 2025-26 he sells a Bengaluru flat for Rs 1,50,00,000. He bought it years ago, so it is a long-term asset, and his indexed cost of acquisition is Rs 1,20,00,000, making his capital gain Rs 30,00,000. He has no other India income that year.

Without a certificate, the buyer, anxious about personal liability for under-deduction and unable to verify Arjun's gain, deducts on the full sale value at the long-term all-in rate of roughly 14.95% (12.5% plus 15% surcharge plus 4% cess). That is Rs 1,50,00,000 x 14.95% = Rs 22,42,500, and Arjun receives about Rs 1,27,57,500. But his actual tax is on the gain, not the sale value: Rs 30,00,000 x 14.95% = Rs 4,48,500 (before any reinvestment relief). He has over-paid by Rs 22,42,500 minus Rs 4,48,500 = Rs 17,94,000, and that sum sits with the department until he files ITR-2 by July 31, 2026 and the refund is processed. At Section 244A interest of 0.5% a month, ten months of waiting earns him roughly Rs 90,000 on the Rs 18 lakh, real money but well short of what the capital could otherwise do, and it assumes the refund is not held up by a Form 26AS mismatch.

Now run the counterfactual with the certificate in hand. Arjun applies on Form 13 six weeks before completion, submitting his indexed-cost working, the purchase deed, his last four ITRs, and the buyer's PAN and TAN. The officer agrees the gain is Rs 30,00,000 and issues a certificate instructing the buyer to deduct on the gain: Rs 30,00,000 x 14.95% = Rs 4,48,500. The deduction now roughly equals his real tax, he receives about Rs 1,45,51,500 instead of Rs 1,27,57,500, and he keeps nearly Rs 18 lakh in his own hands at completion. Same final tax. A completely different cash position.

There is a third move that beats both, if it fits his plans. Suppose Arjun intends to reinvest the entire Rs 30,00,000 gain in another residential property under Section 54 within the permitted window. He can make the case to the officer for a nil deduction certificate, supported by the reinvestment plan. If granted, TDS on the sale is nil, he keeps the full Rs 1,50,00,000 at completion, and the Section 54 relief is claimed on his return. This is the highest-value use of Form 13 and the most scrutinised, because the officer is certifying that no tax is finally due. Get the reinvestment evidence right, or apply for a lower rather than a nil certificate and reclaim the remainder. Reinvestment relief is covered in capital gains exemptions under Sections 54, 54EC and 54F.

Now flip it to a small NRO deposit, where the certificate loses

The contrast is the lesson. Priya is an NRI in Dubai whose only India income for FY 2025-26 is Rs 6,00,000 of NRO fixed-deposit interest. Under Section 195 the bank withholds at 31.2% on the full interest: Rs 6,00,000 x 31.2% = Rs 1,87,200. She receives Rs 4,12,800, and Rs 1,87,200 sits against her PAN. Under the new-regime slabs for FY 2025-26, her actual tax on Rs 6,00,000 of total income, after slab rates and 4% cess, is modest, of the order of Rs 23,400. Her effective rate on this income is therefore about 3.9%, not 31.2%. (Run your own numbers; the gap, not the exact figure, is the point.)

She has three ways to close that gap, and they are not equally sensible at this size. She could apply on Form 13 for a lower-deduction certificate; under Rule 28AA the officer would set a rate near her effective rate, say roughly 4%, and the bank would deduct about Rs 24,000 across the year instead of Rs 1,87,200, leaving about Rs 1,63,000 in her hands. She could instead let the bank deduct the full Rs 1,87,200, file ITR-2 by July 31, 2026, set it against her Rs 23,400 tax, and claim Rs 1,63,800 back plus Section 244A interest. Or she could hand the bank a UAE Tax Residency Certificate and Form 10F to claim the treaty rate on interest, cutting the deduction at source with no application to an officer at all, which for interest and dividends is usually the lighter-touch route. The mechanics are in DTAA mechanics, TRC and Form 10F.

The honest read on Priya is that for Rs 6 lakh of interest, Form 13 is borderline. The refund route recovers the same money with less paperwork, and the treaty route, if her rate is attractive, cuts it at source more simply. Form 13 for NRO interest makes sense only when the deposit is large enough, interest running into many lakhs, that a full year of 31.2% withholding is a meaningful drag. Contrast Arjun, where the certificate frees Rs 18 lakh and is close to essential. Same instrument, opposite verdict, decided entirely by the size of the leak.

Edge cases that quietly derail applications

The buyer has no TAN. To deduct and deposit TDS on a payment to an NRI and file Form 27Q, the buyer needs a TAN, separate from a PAN. The simplified PAN-based Form 26QB route used when buying from a resident seller does not apply when the seller is an NRI. Your Form 13 application needs the buyer's TAN, so this has to be sorted before you apply, and if your buyer does not know they need one, the whole transaction can stall while they obtain it. Flag it at the agreement stage. There is a real simplification coming: the position is that TAN remains mandatory through 30 September 2026, with a PAN-based mechanism for buyers expected from 1 October 2026, which would let a buyer use their PAN instead of obtaining a TAN. Treat the new mechanism as not-yet-live until you confirm it is in force on the portal, and assume your buyer needs a TAN for any sale completing before then.

Your PAN is inoperative. If your PAN has gone inoperative, typically over an Aadhaar-linking issue, you cannot transact cleanly on TRACES, and TDS defaults to the higher 20% under Section 206AA even where a certificate or treaty would allow less. Confirm your PAN is active before you start anything else.

The certificate names too low a consideration. The certificate states a threshold amount up to which the lower rate applies. If the sale price exceeds that figure, the buyer may deduct at the full rate on the excess. Make the consideration on the certificate match the agreed sale price.

Multiple co-owners. If the property is jointly owned, each co-owner is a separate taxpayer with a separate gain, a separate PAN, and a separate share of the consideration. Each should apply for their own Form 13 certificate for their share, and the buyer deducts separately against each owner on the Form 27Q. A single certificate does not cover all co-owners, and a couple selling a jointly held flat who file only one application leave the other half over-withheld.

Surcharge pushes your real rate up. A large property gain can push your total India income past Rs 50 lakh or Rs 1 crore for that year, triggering surcharge of 10% or 15%, which raises your real tax and therefore the rate the officer will certify. Build the correct surcharge into your Form 13 computation. Understate it and the certificate is too low, the buyer under-deducts on the officer's instruction, and you have created a shortfall that surfaces at assessment.

Getting the money out afterwards. A certificate cuts the TDS, but repatriating the proceeds is a separate step with its own paperwork. Most remittances from an NRO account need Form 15CA (a self-declaration) and usually Form 15CB (a CA's certificate that the right tax has been paid), and capital-account remittances such as property-sale proceeds effectively always need the CA certificate. From April 1, 2026, under the Income Tax Act 2025, these are renamed Form 145 and Form 146 respectively, but the requirement is unchanged. NRO repatriation is capped at USD 1 million per financial year across all your outward remittances combined. The full process is in the NRO repatriation process guide.

The honest read

The honest read on Section 197 is that it is the most useful single tool an NRI has against over-withholding, but only when the over-withholding is large. Match the tool to the size of the leak, and the answer is not the same for every kind of income.

For a property sale, the certificate is not optional in any practical sense, and that is my flat recommendation: apply for it on every NRI property sale of any size. The difference between TDS on the sale value and TDS on the gain runs to Rs 15 to 20 lakh on a typical transaction, money you would otherwise wait most of a year to recover at 6% interest while it sits idle. Start Form 13 four to six weeks before completion, get the buyer's TAN early, hand the income computation to a CA who has done NRI property certificates before, match the certified consideration and threshold to the actual sale price, and structure the payment so completion follows the certificate. This is the one place where doing the paperwork in advance clearly and decisively beats claiming it back later. If you are reinvesting the gain under Section 54 or 54F, push for a nil certificate and keep the entire consideration.

For substantial rent, the certificate is similarly worth it, because the default deducts on gross rent while your taxable rent after the Section 24 standard deduction and loan interest is far lower. A certificate for the net figure stops a year of over-withholding on every month's rent.

For NRO interest and dividends, be honest about the amounts. On small balances, take the refund: let the bank deduct, reconcile Form 26AS, and claim it on ITR-2. On interest of any real size, the treaty route, a TRC plus Form 10F handed to your bank, is usually the lighter way to cut withholding at source, with no surcharge or cess on the treaty rate and no officer to convince. Form 13 for interest makes sense mainly when the deposit is large and no attractive treaty rate is available. The exception worth naming: a Gulf resident with a large NRO deposit and a clean Form 10F should reach for the treaty before Form 13 almost every time.

Whatever route you choose, the discipline is the same, and most failures here are self-inflicted. Keep your PAN active and Aadhaar-linked, get the deductor details exactly right, reconcile Form 26AS before you file, and match every TDS claim to it. The certificate, the treaty rate, and the refund all run on the same plumbing, and when it breaks it is almost always a mismatch you could have caught, not the department being difficult.

Related guides

• NRI ITR filing guide for AY 2026-27
• TDS for NRIs: why it is too high and how to claim it back
• Capital gains tax for NRIs on shares and mutual funds
• Capital gains exemptions under Sections 54, 54EC and 54F
• Tax on NRO interest
• Tax on Indian rental income for NRIs
• DTAA mechanics, TRC and Form 10F
• Selling property in India as an NRI
• NRO repatriation process
• Reduce NRO TDS using DTAA
• NRE, NRO and FCNR accounts explained
• All taxation guides
• All banking guides
• All investment guides

This guide is general information, not personal tax advice. Tax rates, surcharge bands, the TAN-versus-PAN rules for property buyers, treaty positions and form numbers change, and the Income Tax Act 2025 takes effect from April 1, 2026, moving the lower-deduction certificate from Section 197 to Section 395, renumbering Form 13 as Form 128 under Rule 213, and renumbering Forms 15CA and 15CB as Forms 145 and 146. Your own position depends on your residency status, total income, country of residence and the specific treaty. Confirm the current rates and rules on the income tax and TRACES portals, check Form 26AS before filing, and consult a qualified chartered accountant or tax adviser before acting on anything here, especially on a property sale or any repatriation.