Repatriating an inheritance from India, 15CA, 15CB and proving the money is genuinely yours

India abolished estate duty decades ago and has no inheritance or gift-on-death tax. When you inherit a bank balance, a fixed deposit, shares or property from a parent, the act of receiving it does not create a tax bill. This surprises people who come from countries that do tax estates: the inherited corpus itself passes to you untaxed.

What is taxable is anything the inherited assets earn or generate after they become yours. Interest on an inherited deposit, dividends on inherited shares, rent on an inherited flat. That income is yours and is taxable in the normal way. And if you sell an inherited asset, the capital gain is taxable; the cost and the holding period simply carry over from the person you inherited from, so a long-held family asset usually produces a long-term gain.

So when the bank asks for a CA certificate, it is not taxing the inheritance. It is checking that the income and any gains sitting on top of the inherited corpus have been accounted for before the money goes abroad.

The other half of the certificate is provenance, showing that the money really is an inheritance and not, say, undisclosed income dressed up as one. The CA who signs your 15CB needs to see how the assets passed to you. That usually means a will, or where there is no will, a succession certificate or legal-heir certificate, together with the death certificate and the account or asset records in the deceased's name.

With those, the chain is clear: the assets belonged to your parent, they passed to you on death, and the funds now in your NRO account are that inheritance. The CA describes the funds in the 15CB as inherited proceeds, references the evidence, and certifies the tax position on any income or gains. From FY 2026-27 (remittances on or after 1 April 2026) these forms are renamed, Form 15CA becomes Form 145 and the CA's Form 15CB becomes Form 146, but the work is the same. The cleaner the documentation of the estate, the faster the bank moves.

Where the inheritance is being shared among several heirs, or where assets were sold and split, it helps to have the division documented too, so the amount you are repatriating ties back to your share rather than the whole estate.

Meera, an NRI in Canada, is the sole heir to her late mother's estate in Chennai, about ₹50 lakh across fixed deposits and a portfolio of shares. She wants to bring it to Canada.

Her chartered accountant starts with provenance: the will names Meera as heir, and with the death certificate and the bank and demat records in her mother's name, the inheritance is clearly evidenced. The deposits and shares themselves are not taxed on inheritance. The CA then looks at what they have earned, interest credited on the FDs and dividends on the shares since they became Meera's, and confirms that income is accounted for in her return. If Meera sells the shares before repatriating, the capital gain is computed using her mother's original cost and holding period, and the tax on that gain is settled.

With the income and any gains squared away, the CA issues a Form 15CB describing the funds as a genuine inheritance and certifying the tax position, and Meera files Form 15CA. At ₹50 lakh the amount is well inside the USD 1 million route for the year, so the bank moves the funds to Canada in one transfer.