Stage · Pre-transaction · HNI
Down-payment due Friday. Your RM moved mountains on the paperwork and has no opinion on whose PAN should be on the deed. Your Bombay CA has been polite and slow. The decision is irreversible, and nobody on the call knows the answer. Here's the math nobody's saying out loud: one bad structural choice on a ₹5 Cr deal costs you ₹50–75 lakh over the holding period. That's before the gift-tax trap, the Section 64clubbing of your spouse's rental, or the repatriation tangle a decade from now.
The five structural questions we answer
01
Sole ownership, joint with spouse, joint with adult child, HUF, or NRI-held LLP. Each has a different Section 56 exposure, a different Section 64 clubbing profile, and a different exit-tax path. The right answer depends on where you file, where your spouse files, and whether you intend the asset to pass on.
02
The money for the purchase has to arrive via a compliant banking channel: NRE remittance, foreign inward remittance, or domestic NRO with source proof. Get this wrong and RBI's FEMA compliance becomes the sale's obstacle decades later. We write the funding memo the buyer's bank will accept and the assessing officer won't question.
03
Buying in a relative's name, taking a discount off stamp duty value, or a below-market transfer from a builder all trigger Section 56(2)(x) deemed income. The receiver (not the buyer) pays tax on the gap between the stamp value and the consideration. This is the single most commonly missed trap in family-structured purchases.
04
If the asset is likely to be inherited by NRI children, the holding structure today decides their Section 49 cost basis tomorrow. A Will, a gift deed during your lifetime, a HUF partition. Each has a different capital gains and repatriation profile when the asset finally sells. We write the roadmap now.
05
If you know the asset will sell in 5-10 years, we model the Form 13 (Section 197) pre-sale position under the treaty of whichever country you'll reside in by then. This determines whether you should be filing returns annually as a non-resident in India to preserve DTAA benefits, or not.
How the engagement works
You tell us the transaction size, the parties, the timeline, and the city. We confirm whether the five structural questions above apply to your case or if it's simpler than you feared. No pitch.
After the call, we email a flat-fee quote for the written review and the follow-up deep dive. You decide before we do any billable work. We publish the fee before you commit to anything.
We write up the ownership structure recommendation, the Section 56 / 64 / 9 exposure analysis, the funding memo, and the 10-year exit roadmap. Delivered within 5 to 7 working days. The CA who signs it has handled HNI NRI transactions before. No template prose.
We walk through the document, answer every question, run scenarios against the live deal terms, and mark any clauses in the builder's draft sale agreement that need redlining. You leave the call with a go / pause / restructure decision.
What changes in your life
Citations: Section 9, Section 56(2)(x), Section 64, Section 49(1), Section 195, Section 197, FEMA 1999.
We take on a limited number of HNI pre-purchase reviews each month to keep the CA's attention real. Transparent flat fee scoped after the call. No NRI markup.
Want the 45-minute pre-purchase review before you sign?
One call. One written review. One fair flat fee scoped after the scoping call.
Senior CA who specialises in NRI tax · we deal with the tax officer, you don't
Related situations
One NRI tax problem usually opens a door to the next. Here's the most likely next step from where you are right now.
It depends on three things: the funding source, the Section 64 clubbing profile if your spouse is a co-owner, and the Section 56(2)(x) position for any co-owner who is not a relative (a spouse is, so that charge does not reach them). A 45-minute pre-purchase review with a CA who handles HNI NRI cases settles the question in one call.
Section 56(2)(x) is not the exposure here: a spouse is a relative under that section, so a transfer between spouses falls outside the charge whatever the stamp duty value says. The real one is Section 64. If the purchase money comes from your account and your spouse has no independent source, the rental income is clubbed back to you. That is a structuring question, and it is worth settling before the deed is drawn.
NRO funding is legal but creates a future FEMA repatriation trail that the bank needs to reconstruct when you eventually sell. NRE or direct foreign inward remittance is cleaner. We write a funding memo the bank and the assessing officer will both accept before you wire the down payment.
Case-dependent. HUF works for pure family succession planning and a small stamp-duty advantage in some states. LLP works if the property is income-generating and multi-owner. For single-property HNI buys, direct individual ownership with correct funding is usually cleanest.
Ideally 3 to 6 weeks before the sale agreement is signed. Enough time to restructure the funding path, renegotiate clauses the builder's draft got wrong, and get the Form 15CA / 15CB pipeline ready. Emergencies inside a week happen, we handle those too.
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