Are your Indian share and mutual fund gains taxable in India if you live in China?

Yes, on both. India taxes a non-resident on income that arises in India, and a gain on an Indian share or an Indian mutual fund unit arises in India. The India-China treaty does not take that right away. Its capital gains article, Article 13, lets India tax gains on Indian immovable property, on shares of Indian companies, and, through its residual clause, on any other Indian property. So whether you sell direct shares or redeem fund units, India keeps the right to tax the gain.

This is the opposite of what a Singapore or Dubai resident gets. Those treaties make most share and unit gains taxable only in the country of residence, which taxes them lightly or not at all. The India-China treaty is source-based, so the escape route that works from Singapore is closed from China. Your fund house and broker are right to treat the gain as taxable in India.

The units-are-not-shares argument rests on the wording of the residual clause, and China's wording is different. A mutual fund unit is issued by a trust, not by a company, so in law a unit is not a share. In 2025 the Mumbai Tribunal used exactly this point in Anushka Sanjay Shah: for a Singapore resident, fund unit gains were not shares, so they fell into the India-Singapore residual clause, Article 13(5), which taxes only in the country of residence. Singapore does not tax them, so nothing was payable in either place.

That result turns on the Singapore residual clause being residence-only. The India-China residual clause is not. It reads that gains on any Indian property other than the property in the earlier paragraphs, arising in India, may be taxed in India. So even if your fund units land in the residual clause as the tribunal said units do, that clause still hands the taxing right to India. The units-are-not-shares point is correct in China too, and it changes nothing, because the residual box it puts you in is a taxable one here.

The Indian tax depends on what you sold. The three common cases:

The 12.5% long-term rate and the 20% short-term rate apply to sales on or after 23 July 2024, and the ₹1.25 lakh yearly exemption is available to you as an NRI. There is no indexation and no currency-fluctuation relief on fund gains. Debt mutual funds that hold more than 65% in debt, bought on or after 1 April 2023, are always taxed as short-term at your slab rate, however long you held them, so there is no 12.5% rate for those.

China's tax on the gain depends on how long you have lived there. Inside China's six-year window for a non-domiciled resident, your Indian gain is foreign-source income paid outside China, so China does not tax it at all, and the Indian tax is the entire cost of the sale. That window, and the single trip abroad over 30 days that resets it, is set out on our China six-year rule page, and it is the timing lever for when to realise a big Indian gain.

Once you complete six straight years without a reset, China taxes your worldwide income, and a capital gain falls into China's flat 20% property-transfer category. At that point the same gain is taxed in both countries, but the treaty lets China credit the Indian tax you paid under Article 23, so you are not taxed twice. The credit only reaches up to China's own 20%, so if the Indian tax is higher, the extra stays an Indian cost. Selling while you are still inside the window keeps China out of the gain entirely.

Tax often comes out before the right rate can be applied. When you redeem Indian mutual fund units, the fund house deducts TDS on your gain under Section 195, which becomes Section 393(2) from FY 2026-27, and it cannot apply your final rate or your ₹1.25 lakh exemption for you. Listed shares sold on the exchange are usually settled without tax at source, so there you pay through advance tax and your return instead.

You set it right by filing an Indian return, ITR-2, showing the gain at the correct 12.5%, 20% or slab rate, and any TDS over-deducted comes back as a refund with interest. You support the return with a Tax Residency Certificate from the Chinese tax authority and Form 10F, which becomes Form 41 from FY 2026-27. If a redemption is large and you would rather not wait for the refund, a lower-deduction certificate under Section 197, now Form 128 under Section 395, before you redeem brings the TDS down to the real tax up front.

Ravi, an NRI in Shanghai and four years into his posting, so still inside the six-year window, redeems Indian equity mutual funds and books a long-term gain of ₹8 lakh. He also sells listed Indian shares held for eight months, a short-term gain of ₹2 lakh.

On the funds, India taxes the gain above the ₹1.25 lakh exemption, so ₹6.75 lakh at 12.5% under Section 112A, about ₹84,375. On the shares, the short-term gain of ₹2 lakh is taxed at 20% under Section 111A, ₹40,000. The fund house deducts TDS on the redemption, which Ravi trues up on his ITR-2 with his Chinese Tax Residency Certificate and Form 10F, now Form 41. Because he is inside the six-year window, China does not tax either gain, so his total cost is the Indian tax on the two gains, ₹1,24,375 before the mandatory 4% cess. He cannot move the fund gain out of Indian tax the way a Singapore resident could, because the India-China treaty lets India tax it. Had he waited until past six years in China, the same gains would also face China's flat 20%, with only the Indian tax credited back.