The appeal deadline from the order has passed, what now?
The deadline runs from the order, so the first question is not what to argue but what happened: which order, served when, on whom, and why nothing was filed. A late appeal has to carry both the substantive grounds and an evidenced account of the delay, and the second of those is often harder to assemble than the first, because it depends on correspondence nobody kept. We start by fixing the service date from records on both sides. Until that is settled you do not know how late you are, and an appeal that misstates it is worse than one that is plainly out of time.
What kind of evidence explains a delay in filing an appeal?
Contemporaneous material, not an explanation written afterwards. What the record needs is documents showing when the order actually reached someone able to act on it, and what happened next: the address it went to, whether that address was still current, emails to and from the former adviser, the date the taxpayer first learnt of it. Where a company has changed hands or directors have left, the handover papers matter. An account built from dated documents can be tested by someone else. A narrative built from recollection asks them to take your word for it, which on this point they have no reason to do.
Does filing late weaken the grounds of the appeal itself?
The substance is judged on the substance, but a late appeal carries a practical cost: attention goes to the delay first, and the file has to be strong enough to survive that before anyone reaches the merits. For a non-resident it also means the treaty position has to be fully evidenced at the point of filing rather than developed later, so residence certification, contracts and evidence of where the work was done all go in from the start. A late appeal that arrives complete is treated quite differently from one that arrives thin with a promise of more to come.
Our Indian adviser missed the appeal deadline, what are our options?
Establish the facts before deciding anything: what order was made, when it was served and on whom, what instructions the adviser had, and what is actually at stake on the assessment as it stands. Only then is it worth deciding whether to go in late with the delay evidenced, or whether a different route fits the case better. The instinct to file something immediately, to show good faith, usually costs more than the day it saves, because the grounds go in with the appeal and are then part of the record for good.
Does a late first appeal affect a further appeal afterwards?
It can, because the first appeal is where the record is built. If the delay has consumed the attention and the grounds went in thin, the document a later forum reads is thin, and fresh evidence is harder to introduce at that stage than it would have been at the outset. So the case for putting real work into a late appeal is stronger, not weaker, than for one filed in time. The framing done at this stage is what the taxpayer lives with through everything that follows it.
We have several orders all past the deadline, where do we start?
By building the list before filing anything. Each order has its own date and its own service history, and they are rarely in the same position: some may still be in time, some recoverable, some genuinely finished. Sorting them tells you where the value is, and it often turns out that one order carries most of the exposure and the rest follow from it. We also look for the relationships between them, such as a penalty order that depends on an assessment, or a reassessment that repeats an earlier year, because appealing the right one first can make the others straightforward.
How does cross-border tax planning work?
It starts with facts rather than structures: which countries have a claim on you, what each one taxes, and where the two overlap. From there the decisions are about order and timing — which country taxes first, where relief is claimed, and whether a filing or a certificate has to be in place before money moves rather than after. Most of the value is in the sequencing, because relief claimed late is usually relief recovered slowly. See international tax planning.
How would a foreign tax authority know I am resident there?
Mostly from information you or your bank already provided. Account-opening forms ask you to self-certify tax residence, and that certification is reported between authorities under the Common Reporting Standard or, for US accounts, under the FATCA framework. Beyond that: employer and payroll filings, property registries, immigration records and the tax filings of anyone who paid you. The realistic planning assumption is that the data arrives. See FATCA and information reporting.
