Which Indian return do I file as an NRI with capital gains?
The return built for this is the one carrying the capital-gains schedules alongside a residency schedule, and for most non-residents it is the default rather than a special case. You are taken to it by the facts: a gain on Indian shares or Indian property, rent from more than one property, or several sources at once. The form exists because those things need schedules, and the schedules are where the computation is actually made. Choosing it is the easy part. The work is in the order the schedules are completed, because the residency position feeds the treatment of the gain and any relief claim reads off both.
Do residents with foreign assets have to file ITR-2?
A resident with foreign assets to disclose sits inside this return's population, which surprises people who think of it as the non-resident's form. The disclosure schedules are the reason. Holdings abroad — accounts, securities, an interest in property, an entitlement under a former employer's plan — are reported by the resident who holds them, and the return carrying those schedules is the one that has to be used. Returning NRIs meet this in their first year of Indian residence, often with years of accumulated holdings to describe. Assembling the holdings takes far longer than the filing, so start from statements rather than memory.
Why does ITR-2 ask about my residency during the year?
Because residency decides most of what follows. It sets which income India can tax, whether relief is available on a particular item, and how a gain is treated. The residency schedule is therefore not administrative trivia at the front of the return; it is the input the later schedules read from. Filers who complete it last, from whatever looks consistent with the rest of the return, end up with a computation they cannot defend when it is questioned. Work it out first from travel and employment records, write down how you reached it, and complete the return in that order.
I only receive rent from one Indian flat — which return?
Rental income from India is within this return's scope, but scope is not the same as necessity. One let property and nothing else can sit inside a simpler form where residency and the other conditions allow it, and a non-resident landlord generally does not have that option. So the question is not which return is technically capable of carrying the income, but which returns your facts leave available. For a non-resident with Indian rent the answer usually resolves to the return carrying the residency schedule. Settle residency for the year, list every Indian source, then choose.
Why did my treaty relief not appear in my ITR-2 computation?
Most often because the schedules were completed out of order. Relief is not a box that reduces a total on its own; it reads off the residency position and the item of income it belongs to, and where those are entered after it, or inconsistently with it, the computation does not carry it through. Relief also has to be attributed to the income it relates to, by category, rather than applied to the return as a whole. When a claim has gone missing, rebuild the return in sequence instead of adjusting the relief figure until the total looks right.
Which return do I file if I own more than one Indian property?
More than one house property takes the year out of the simplest form and into the return carrying a property schedule for each holding. The test is on what is held, not on what produces income, so a vacant flat and an inherited share both count. Non-residents reach the same answer by a shorter route, since the simpler form is not open to them in any event. List the properties, the share held in each and the basis of that share before deciding the form. That list, rather than the return, is the thing worth keeping, because it gets asked for repeatedly.
Can an NRI claim back TDS deducted on Indian income?
Yes, by filing an Indian return for the year. Withholding on rent, interest, dividends, professional fees or a property sale is an advance payment, not a final tax, so where the actual liability is lower — because of the treaty, because of the basic exemption, or because the deduction was computed on gross proceeds rather than gain — the excess comes back as a refund. It needs your PAN, a validated Indian bank account and the deductor's statement filed. See Indian filing and credit claims.
What is a DTAA?
Double Taxation Avoidance Agreement — India's name for a tax treaty. It does the same work as any treaty: allocates taxing rights between India and the other country, caps Indian withholding on payments abroad, and sets out whether relief comes by exemption or by credit. To use one you generally need a tax residency certificate from the other country, Form 10F, and a PAN in the deductor's records. See DTAA relief between India and Canada.
