Do I have to file at home while living in Seychelles?
It depends on residence, not on address — except for US citizens and green-card holders, for whom the answer is yes regardless of where they live. We settle the residence question first, because every other answer follows from it.
Is there a treaty between my country and Seychelles?
Possibly, and the version in force for your year is the one that matters — protocols and multilateral-instrument positions change what a treaty does without changing its name. We check it against the authority rather than a summary. Where no treaty applies, domestic relief takes over.
I own property in Seychelles. Where is the rent taxed?
In Seychelles, because that is where the property sits. The complication is the base: gross-rent withholding takes no account of mortgage interest, tax or repairs, so a leveraged property can face tax on turnover. An election onto net profit, where it exists, is what fixes that — and it has its own timing.
Do I report a dormant Seychelles company I never used?
Yes. Home reporting for foreign corporations is triggered by holding the interest, not by the company trading, so a shell that has never issued an invoice is reportable in the same way as an operating business. Owners are often told the opposite by whoever incorporated it, because from the local side a dormant company genuinely has very little to do. The penalties on these information returns apply for lateness even where no tax is payable, which is how a company formed for a transaction that never happened becomes the most expensive item in the file. The first step is establishing precisely which years the interest was held.
What happens at home when I wind up my offshore company?
A wind-up is a transaction, and it is usually reportable at home on its own account. Distributing what is left to the shareholder is a disposition whose consequence depends on what was originally put in, what the company holds now, and how the home system characterises the distribution — return of capital, dividend, or gain. Retained earnings that were never distributed do not disappear because the company does. The information return for the year of the wind-up is also the one most likely to be examined, so the closing balance sheet and the record of contributions matter far more than anything filed during the quiet years.
Is it still legal to hold a Seychelles offshore company?
Holding a foreign company is not itself a problem; failing to report it is. The difficulty with older offshore structures is that they were established when the surrounding reporting regimes were thinner, and the paperwork supporting the original contributions and the ownership chain has sometimes gone with the agent who set them up. Banks now ask beneficial-ownership questions they did not ask then, and information exchange has made the holding visible in ways it was not. The practical position is that such a company can usually be regularised. What cannot be done is leaving it undisclosed while quietly unwinding it.
Who is the beneficial owner if a nominee holds the shares?
For home reporting, the person who really owns and controls the interest, whatever the register says. Nominee arrangements, bearer-style holdings and trust wrappers were common features of older structures, and the home information return asks about the substance of ownership rather than the name on the certificate. A declaration of trust sitting in a drawer is evidence, not a shield. Where those documents no longer exist the position has to be reconstructed from the incorporation papers, the bank mandates and the correspondence with the agent. Establish who the authority would treat as owner before deciding what to file, not afterwards.
I inherited an offshore company, so what must I file?
Two things, usually. The holding becomes yours from the date of death or the date it is distributed out of the estate, so the reporting obligation for a foreign corporation begins then and runs for every year you hold it. Separately, the assets inside the company and the estate that passed them may raise their own questions in more than one country. Inherited structures are the hardest to document, because the person who understood them is gone and the agent's records are often the only surviving source. Ask the executor for the incorporation file, the share register and the banking history before the estate closes.
Can I bring an undisclosed offshore company back into the system?
Usually, through the voluntary disclosure route the relevant authority operates, and its value depends on getting there before the authority does. What matters in practice is completeness: partial disclosures tend to be treated worse than late complete ones, because the missing piece reads as a choice rather than an oversight. The work is mostly reconstruction — establishing the years held, the ownership chain, the amounts contributed, and the income earned inside the company — and that takes longer than the filing itself. Start with whatever the incorporation agent still holds, since those are the records that vanish when an agent closes or changes hands.
What does "RIC" mean on my foreign tax paid statement?
Registered Investment Company — a US mutual fund or ETF. When a fund holds securities from many countries it may report the foreign tax it paid on your behalf without breaking it down by country, using RIC as the country label. You are allowed to use it that way on Form 1116 for that income, which saves you reconstructing a country-by-country split you have no way of knowing. See Form 1116.
Is my Indian provident fund or PPF still tax-free now that I live abroad?
The exemption is an Indian one, and it does not travel. Your new country of residence taxes worldwide income under its own rules, and several — the United States in particular — may treat the annual growth in a foreign retirement or savings plan as currently taxable and separately reportable, whether or not you withdrew anything. So an account that is genuinely tax-free in India can be a taxable, reportable asset where you now live. See Indian pensions received abroad.
