Canadian company opening in India — what part of this actually needs a professional?
Some of it, yes — and we will say so on the call if that is the honest answer. The parts that are worth paying for are the ones where a missed election, a missed deadline or an unverified threshold costs more than the fee: a liaison office may not earn income; a branch is taxed on Indian profits at rates that differ from a subsidiary's; a subsidiary is an Indian company with transfer pricing and repatriation questions.
What if I have already filed and got it wrong?
That is a common starting point. We re-derive the position, identify whether an amendment or a disclosure route is the right vehicle, and tell you which one preserves the relief that is still available. The order matters more than the speed.
How long will it take?
It depends on the documents rather than on us. Once the pack is complete most filings turn around inside a fortnight; anything that needs a certificate from a tax authority runs on that authority's timetable, which we tell you at the start rather than at the end.
What is the difference between a liaison office and a branch in India?
A liaison office is a representative presence and nothing more. It may not earn income, so it cannot invoice, cannot close revenue contracts, and is funded from the Canadian parent. A branch is the same Canadian company operating in India, taxed there on the Indian profits it earns, at rates that differ from those applied to a subsidiary. The choice therefore fixes what your people in India are permitted to do on any given day. If you expect them to negotiate price and take orders, a liaison office is the wrong container from the outset, and correcting it afterwards is harder than choosing correctly at the start.
Can my Indian liaison office start invoicing local customers?
No. The defining condition of a liaison office is that it may not earn income. If the team in India has begun quoting, negotiating price and raising invoices, the activity has outgrown the structure, and the problem is not only a regulatory one. It raises the question of whether the Canadian company now has a taxable presence in India that nobody has filed for, and whether profit has been earned there in years that are already closed in Canada. The remedy is to decide which structure the activity actually belongs in, convert deliberately, and deal with the period that has already run.
Should we open a subsidiary or a branch in India?
They are not variations on a theme. A branch is the Canadian company itself, taxed on its Indian profits at rates that differ from a subsidiary's, with the parent exposed directly to what happens in India. A subsidiary is an Indian company: a separate taxpayer, which brings transfer pricing on everything that passes between it and the parent, and a repatriation question every time you want profit back in Canada. The honest way to choose is to look at how you intend to exit, because the closure process is where the two diverge most sharply and where the wrong early choice becomes expensive.
How do we get profits out of an Indian subsidiary back to Canada?
That is the repatriation question, and it is decided long before there are profits to move. A subsidiary is a separate Indian company, so value leaves it by a route you have to choose and document — a dividend, a charge for services the Canadian parent actually provided, or a royalty for something it actually owns. Each route carries its own withholding in India and its own pricing evidence, and the evidence has to exist before the payment, not after a query. A branch is a different problem entirely, because there is only one company and no distribution to make.
What is a project office and when would we need one?
A project office is the presence designed around a defined contract rather than an open-ended intention to trade. Its permitted activities are bounded by that project, its tax treatment follows the work performed in India, and its closure is contemplated from the beginning because the project has an end. That makes it the right answer for a firm that has won one Indian contract and has no settled plan beyond it, and the wrong answer for a firm that means to build a continuing local business. Choosing it as a way of postponing the real structural decision usually just moves the decision to a worse moment.
How difficult is it to close an Indian office once it is open?
Harder than opening it, and the difficulty differs by structure, which is the practical reason to get the choice right at the start. Each of the four routes has its own closure process: final filings, clearance from the tax authorities, settlement of what is owed locally, and permission to move remaining funds out. A dormant entity is not a closed one — it continues to generate filing obligations in India and disclosure obligations in Canada for as long as it exists on the register. If an entity has served its purpose, closing it properly is work worth budgeting for.
How is foreign tax credit claimed in India?
By furnishing Form 67 with proof of the foreign tax — the certificate or statement from the other country's authority or payer — and by relieving the income under the specific DTAA article rather than generally. The credit is limited to the Indian tax on that income, and it is computed source by source rather than in one pool. The deadline for furnishing Form 67 has been amended more than once, so we confirm it for the year rather than assume. See foreign tax credit in India.
What is RNOR status and why does it matter to a returning NRI?
Resident but Not Ordinarily Resident is a transitional Indian status that can apply for a limited period after you return, based on how long you were non-resident before. While it lasts, certain foreign income stays outside the Indian net that would be taxed once you become an ordinary resident — which makes the timing of a return date, and of realising foreign gains, a genuine planning decision rather than an administrative one. See the RNOR window.
