There's No India-Nigeria DTAA. Everything You've Been Told Is Wrong.

India has signed Double Taxation Avoidance Agreements (DTAAs) with more than 90 countries. Nigeria is not one of them.

That sentence matters because several websites, including, to our shame, an earlier version of this one, have published claims about a "7.5% India-Nigeria DTAA interest rate" and called it "the best in the world." It isn't real. The treaty does not exist. It was never signed. The rate was never negotiated.

What exists instead is India's own domestic law. Your Indian income is taxed at the normal non-resident rates, and you get anything over-deducted back by filing your Indian return, not by any treaty.

One thing to clear up, because most Nigeria guides get it backwards. Section 91 of the Income-tax Act is India's unilateral relief, but it is for a person resident IN India who paid tax in a no-treaty country. It is not relief you claim on your Indian return for your Indian FD interest or rent while you live in Nigeria, because that income is Indian-source and you are non-resident. The credit for your Indian income being taxed again in Nigeria is given on the Nigerian side: Nigeria lets a resident credit the foreign tax already paid against the Nigerian bill on the same income. So the double-tax relief is real, it just sits in Lagos, not in your Indian ITR.

Your bank in India will deduct the default rates. No DTAA = no treaty rate.

- FD interest: 30% (plus cess)

- Dividends from Indian companies: 20%

- Rental income: 31.2%

- Capital gains: per Indian law

Form 10F does not help here because there is no treaty to invoke. A TRC from the Nigeria Revenue Service (NRS, the renamed FIRS since 1 January 2026) also does not help you in India, since there is no treaty to claim. It matters on the Nigerian side, as evidence for the foreign-tax credit your Nigerian advisor claims there.

If an Indian CA or website tells you otherwise, they are wrong. Check the official list of India's DTAAs on incometaxindia.gov.in. Nigeria will not be there.

Not having a DTAA removes one tool. It does not remove all of them. A lot of NRI tax work has nothing to do with treaty rates.

**ITR filing for NRIs.** Clean, accurate, and on time. Including all the schedules (FA, AL, NRI disclosures) most Indian CAs get wrong for clients who don't live in India.

**Property sale Form 13 (Section 395, formerly Section 197).** Selling property in Mumbai or Kochi while living in Lagos? Post Budget 2024 (effective 23 July 2024), the default TDS on an NRI property sale is 12.5% flat under Section 195, computed on the full sale value, not the gain. With surcharge and cess, the effective deduction is 13-14.95% of the full sale price. A Form 13 lower-TDS certificate from the Assessing Officer drops this to the actual capital gain rate. On a ₹1 crore property sale with a ₹40 lakh gain, the cash-flow difference is ₹8-10 lakh. This matters whether or not you have a DTAA.

**Condonation of delay under Section 119(2)(b).** For past years where you missed filing or filed incorrectly. The CBDT can allow filing up to 5 Assessment Years late (CBDT Circular 11/2024) if there's a genuine hardship.

**Refund the over-deducted TDS.** The 30% cut on your NRO interest is only a withholding. We file your Indian return so it's taxed at slab rates after the basic exemption, and the excess comes back with interest under Section 244A. The credit for the same income taxed again in Nigeria is claimed on the Nigerian side, and we hand your Nigerian advisor the India-tax-paid figures for it.

**Tax notices.** Section 148 reassessment, Section 245 refund adjustment, Section 143(2) scrutiny. End-to-end, we respond and represent. Under Section 288, we can be your Authorized Representative, you don't fly to Mumbai or Delhi.

**Repatriation (15CA/15CB).** Moving funds from India to your Nigerian account, the compliance forms, CA certificate, bank coordination, all handled.

None of these depend on a DTAA.

Every real DTAA has a text. It lists articles. Article 10 for dividends, Article 11 for interest, Article 13 for capital gains, and so on. It was signed on a specific date, notified by CBDT, and is published by India's Income Tax Department.

There is no such document for Nigeria. No Article 11 saying 7.5%. No signing ceremony. No gazette notification.

If anyone, a CA, a website, a friend of a friend, tells you there is a 7.5% treaty rate for Nigerian NRIs, ask them for the article number and the date the treaty was signed. They won't be able to give you one.

We're being upfront about this because an NRI tax site has one job: don't cost the user money by being wrong. If we'd sold a Nigerian NRI on the 7.5% rate and their bank refused to honour Form 10F, the real damage would be on their side, not ours. So we fixed it. And we're publishing this post to make sure anyone else who was misled can get to the honest answer.