Indian company setting up in the US — how much of this can I do myself?
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: entity choice and funding structure decide the US tax profile and the withholding on repatriation, while India's outbound-investment reporting continues annually.
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.
Should our Indian company open a US branch or a US subsidiary?
The two are taxed on different premises, so the choice is worth making deliberately rather than discovering it after registration. A subsidiary is a separate US taxpayer with its own filings and its own balance sheet; a branch is the Indian company itself operating in the US, which exposes the parent directly and puts the group's own accounts in front of a second authority. Funding, repatriation and the withholding on money going back all follow from the choice. Customers, banks and state registrations tend to push towards a subsidiary, but the decision should be recorded with its reasons, because it is expensive to reverse once trading has started.
Does a US subsidiary with no income still have to file anything?
Yes, and this is the point groups most often get wrong. The US information returns covering transactions with related parties are triggered by the transactions themselves, not by profit, so a company that has only been funded, has paid some set-up costs and has not yet earned anything can still have a full set of obligations. The exposure is assessed per form, which means the amount at stake bears no relationship to the size of the activity. A dormant or pre-revenue entity is therefore one of the riskier things to leave sitting quietly in a group structure.
What counts as a related-party transaction between our Indian parent and US company?
More than the invoices. Money advanced to the US entity and the interest on it, amounts the parent pays on its behalf, services performed in India for the US company, use of the group's software or brand, staff seconded either way, and stock or equipment moved between them are all transactions between related parties, whether or not anyone raised a document for them. Reimbursements and netted-off balances count too. The practical exercise at the end of a first year is usually reconstructing what actually passed between the two entities, because the ledger rarely shows all of it in one place.
How should we charge our US subsidiary for software developed in India?
Establish first what the US company is actually getting: a licence to use the software, development work performed for it, or access to a platform the group runs. Each of those is a different transaction, priced differently, and the characterisation also drives how the payment is treated when it leaves the US. Write the arrangement down before invoicing and keep the evidence of what was delivered. Service and software charges between an Indian parent and its US subsidiary are exactly the transactions both authorities look at first, so the documentation is not an administrative afterthought.
Do we still report the US company in India after the money has gone?
Yes. The Indian outbound-investment reporting on an overseas entity is an annual obligation that runs for as long as the investment is held, and it draws on the US company's own financial statements. That means the US accounts have to be produced in time and in a form the Indian filing can use. Groups tend to treat the initial remittance as the compliance event and the subsequent years as nothing, which is how the Indian record and the US record of the same subsidiary quietly stop matching each other.
We have not filed our US related-party forms for past years, what now?
Deal with it deliberately rather than by filing the current year and hoping the earlier ones are forgotten. The first task is establishing what was actually required for each open year, which means reconstructing the transactions between the entities year by year from bank records, intercompany accounts and whatever agreements exist. Once the position is known, the filings can be prepared and submitted together with a considered explanation of the circumstances. Because the exposure on these returns is per form and per year, the difference between an organised catch-up and a piecemeal one is substantial.
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.
How does a remittance actually work, and is it taxed?
A remittance is a transfer of money, not a category of income, and moving your own funds between your own accounts is not what creates tax. What can create tax is the income behind the money and the rules of the country it leaves. India, for instance, collects tax at source when a resident individual remits abroad under the Liberalised Remittance Scheme, and requires certification before certain payments leave. The transfer is the trigger for paperwork rather than for tax. See the LRS and tax collected at source.
