Indian reassessment notices (s.148) — do I need an adviser, or can I do it alone?
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: the procedure requires the department to share the information relied on and consider the taxpayer's reply before proceeding.
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 does a section 148 notice from India actually mean?
It is a statement that the department intends to reopen a year you had treated as closed. It is not an assessment and it is not yet a demand. The first question is therefore not whether the income was taxable, but whether the reopening itself is validly founded. The procedure requires the department to share the information it is relying on and to consider your reply before it proceeds, and that reply is where most of the work sits. Answering the merits straight away, without addressing the basis of the reopening, gives up the point that is often the strongest one available to you.
Can India reopen an old year if I now live in Canada?
Where you live when the notice arrives does not decide the question. The reopening is aimed at a particular past year, and it is that year's facts and your status in that year that matter. What changes for a non-resident is the shape of the evidence. The department is usually working from Indian-side data — a property registration, a bank credit, a remittance record — and the answer lies in documents that sit in two countries at once. Assembling that trail takes longer from abroad than the notice timetable assumes, which is the practical reason to start on the day it arrives rather than the week before the reply is due.
Why was my Indian tax year reopened over a property sale?
Property and remittance data are the two streams that most often bring a non-resident back under review. Registration of a sale produces a record with a value attached to it, and that record reaches the department whether or not a return was filed for the year. The reopening is generally an inference drawn from that single data point. It is answered with the transaction trail: how the property was acquired, what was paid and from where, what was received, and through which banking channel the money moved. Where the trail is complete, the inference usually does not survive it.
Should I argue the merits or challenge the reopening first?
Both, but in that order. The reply deals first with whether the department may reopen the year at all, because the procedure gives you a right to see the information relied on and to be heard on it before anything further happens. Only then does the reply turn to the substance, and the substance is documentary rather than argumentative. Conceding the reopening by going straight to the merits is a common and expensive habit: it converts a question about process, where the record often favours the taxpayer, into a question about valuation and source, where it may not.
What documents do I need to answer an Indian reassessment notice?
Start with the notice itself and with whatever communication preceded it, because the reply has to identify precisely what the department says it has. After that, the papers follow the transaction: the acquisition documents, the proof of what was paid and out of which account, the sale documentation, and the bank statements on both sides of the remittance. Where the money came from employment or from a sale abroad, the foreign-side records matter as much as the Indian ones. Missing pieces are better identified early and requested from banks and registries in parallel, since third parties abroad do not work to the department's timetable.
Does replying to the notice stop the reassessment going ahead?
Not automatically. A reply is something the department must consider before proceeding, not something that ends the matter by itself. What a good reply does is make the record. If the reopening proceeds regardless, everything that follows is read against what was filed at this stage, so a reply that is complete, dated and evidenced is worth considerably more later than a holding response sent to meet the deadline. That is the case for treating the first reply as the main piece of work rather than as correspondence.
Do Canada and the United States share tax information?
Yes, through more than one channel. The treaty has an exchange-of-information article that supports both routine and on-request exchange. Separately, an intergovernmental agreement has Canadian financial institutions identify US-reportable accounts and report them to the CRA, which passes them to the IRS, with the reverse flow for Canadian residents. Most other country pairs use the Common Reporting Standard for the same purpose. See FATCA reporting.
Do NRIs pay tax on money sent to India?
Sending your own funds to India is a transfer of capital, not income, so the remittance itself is not taxed. What is taxable is income the money then earns in India — interest, rent, capital gains — under the rules for the account type it sits in. Sending money out of India is the direction that needs certification before the bank will act. See NRE, NRO and FCNR accounts.
