I have received a notice from the Indian tax department, what now?
Start with the notice itself: what it is, what it asks for, and the date it runs from. Scrutiny and reassessment work to deadlines counted from the notice, so the date is the first thing to fix, because everything else can be built afterwards. Then read what the notice actually puts in issue rather than treating the whole year as open, and answer that. The record you build at this stage is what the later stages read, so a hurried partial answer stays expensive long after the deadline has gone.
Why has India reopened a year I already filed?
Usually because something was reported about you automatically. Property registrations, deposit interest and remittances are all reported to the department, and each one is a data point that can be set against what your return said. Non-residents are reopened disproportionately often for that reason: their Indian affairs consist largely of the very transactions that get reported. A reopening is not in itself an allegation that something is wrong. It means a reported item and your return have not been matched to each other.
Can I find out what information the reassessment is based on?
Yes, and you should do so before answering. Reassessment requires the department to share the information it is relying on, and your answer should address that material rather than the year in general. Answering broadly is how people put more in issue than was ever raised against them. Ask for the information, read it against your own records for the year, and then respond to the specific mismatch it discloses and to nothing else.
Do I have to travel to India for a scrutiny hearing?
Generally not. Scrutiny now runs largely through a faceless electronic process, with submissions and documents filed against the notice rather than handed in at a local office, and with deadlines counted from the notice itself. What that changes in practice is that the matter is decided on the documents you file, because there is no hearing at which to explain them. So the pack has to be self-explanatory: the reader will not ask you what a statement means. Papers can be exchanged and signed through secure cloud software.
What happens if I miss the deadline on an Indian notice?
The proceeding continues without your material, and a conclusion may be reached on what the department already holds. That is the real cost of a missed date: not a penalty in itself, but a record built without your side of it in it. Because the appellate stages read the record made at this stage, material that was not filed then is hard to introduce afterwards. Where a date has passed, the immediate work is to establish what stage the matter has reached and what can still be placed on the record.
Can I produce evidence on appeal that I did not file earlier?
Treat it as unlikely rather than as a fallback. The appellate stages read the record built during scrutiny or reassessment, so evidence that was available and not filed then is being introduced into a proceeding that has already formed on other material. This is the strongest practical reason to answer the first notice fully, even where the amount in issue looks small. The cheapest place to put a document on the record is the first place somebody asked for it.
What is DTAA?
DTAA — a Double Taxation Avoidance Agreement — is India's term for a tax treaty. It allocates taxing rights between India and the other country, caps withholding on cross-border payments, and gives relief for income taxed twice by either exempting it or crediting the foreign tax. Relief is claimed, and from the Indian side that normally means a tax residency certificate, Form 10F and Form 67. See DTAA relief.
Do foreign shares, ESOPs and RSUs count as foreign assets in an Indian return?
Yes. Equity held directly, shares acquired under an employee plan once they have vested to you, units in foreign funds, the custodial account they sit in and the foreign bank account that funds it are all disclosable by a resident — separately, with acquisition cost, peak value and income for the year. This is where returning employees of multinational groups most often have a gap, because the plan administrator reports to the employer, not to you. See Schedule FA reporting.
