Repatriating the proceeds of an Indian property sale — 15CA, 15CB and getting the tax signed off

Selling Indian property as an NRI triggers two things that have to meet in the middle. The first is the capital gain — the difference between what you sold for and your cost of acquisition, on which tax is actually due (for a sale on or after 23 July 2024 an NRI's long-term gain is taxed at a flat 12.5% with no indexation, under Section 112). The second is the TDS the buyer deducts under Section 195 when paying you, which is the law's way of collecting tax up front before the money reaches a non-resident.

The trouble is that the buyer's TDS is usually deducted on the whole sale price, not on the much smaller gain — so it is very often far more than the real tax. The repatriation paperwork is where the two are reconciled: the CA computes the actual gain, works out the real tax, and the 15CB certifies that this tax is covered by what has been deducted and paid. If too much was deducted, the excess is recovered through your return as a refund.

This is why a property sale is rarely a same-day repatriation. The gain has to be computed properly first, because the certificate that releases the money depends on it.

Because the buyer's Section 195 TDS is usually struck on the full sale price, an NRI can have a very large sum locked up — tax deducted on, say, a ₹2 crore sale when the actual gain might be a fraction of that. Getting it back means waiting for a refund after filing the return, which can take many months.

The cleaner route is a lower-TDS certificate under Form 13 (Section 197), applied for before the sale completes. The CA computes the expected gain, applies to the income tax department, and the certificate tells the buyer to deduct TDS on the real gain rather than the whole price. Less is locked up, the eventual repatriation reconciles easily, and there is little or no refund to chase.

If you are reading this after the sale, with full TDS already deducted, the money is not lost — it comes back through your return. But if the sale has not happened yet, the Form 13 step is almost always worth taking, and it is a different piece of work from the 15CA/15CB that comes at repatriation. To see roughly where your gain lands before you talk to anyone, our capital gains calculator gives you a first estimate.

Vikram, an NRI in the UK, sold a flat in Pune for ₹1.6 crore. He had inherited it from his father, who bought it in 2005. The buyer, following the rule for paying a non-resident, deducted TDS under Section 195 on the full ₹1.6 crore — far more than the tax actually due.

Vikram's chartered accountant computes the real position. Because the flat was inherited, the cost and the holding period carry over from his father, so his father's 2005 cost becomes Vikram's cost and the gain is long-term — and as an NRI he is taxed at the flat 12.5% rate with no indexation (Section 112). The gain is still far smaller than the ₹1.6 crore sale price the TDS was struck on. The actual capital-gains tax comes to a modest amount against the large TDS already deducted. The CA then issues a Form 15CB certifying the gain, the tax due and that it is covered, and Vikram files Form 15CA to move the net proceeds to the UK, within the USD 1 million route for the financial year. The excess TDS is claimed back as a refund when he files his return.

Had Vikram come to a CA before selling, a Form 13 lower-TDS certificate would have cut the deduction down to roughly the real tax — leaving little to repatriate around and no large refund to wait for.

Sometimes the sale proceeds land in your NRO account and then sit there — the bank won't send the lot abroad in one transfer, and it isn't always clear why. The usual reason is the annual cap: you can move money out of NRO balances only up to USD 1 million per financial year (the RBI / FEMA route), and a large sale can be worth more than that ceiling on its own. The bank isn't blocking you; it is holding the part that spills over the year's limit.

The answer is to release it in stages rather than fight for it all now. Whatever fits inside this year's USD 1 million goes out once the tax is settled and the certificate is in hand; the balance stays parked in the NRO account, fully yours and earning interest, and goes out after the new financial year opens in April under the next year's ceiling. The money is not trapped — it is queued. The funds keep their character as taxed sale proceeds while they wait, so the later transfer doesn't need the whole gain re-examined; it is the same certified position, repeated under a fresh year's limit.

The only real cost of phasing is time, not tax. A CA who has already certified the gain can schedule the tranches so each year's transfer clears cleanly, and tell you in advance how many years a very large sale will take to bring across in full.

If you sold one property last year and another this year — or two properties close together — the question is how the USD 1 million ceiling treats them. It is not a per-property allowance and not a once-in-a-lifetime figure. It is per person, per financial year, and it pools everything you take out of your NRO balances in that year: two sales, plus any other NRO money you remit, all draw on the same USD 1 million for that April-to-March window.

So two sales in the same year share one ceiling; two sales in different years each get their own. There is no lifetime cap on the total you can eventually bring across — you can repatriate up to USD 1 million every year, indefinitely, until the balance is cleared. The practical move when several sales bunch together is to spread the remittances across financial years so each year's combined transfers stay inside the limit, rather than trying to push two large sales through one window and having the bank hold the excess.

Each sale still needs its own tax position settled and its own certificate, because the gains are computed separately. The CA looks at the running total of what you've already remitted in the year before scheduling the next transfer, so the bank doesn't bounce a request that would tip you over the cap.

Many NRIs can't be in India to sign the sale, so they appoint a relative or friend on a registered Power of Attorney to complete it for them. A common worry is that this somehow shifts the tax onto the person who signed. It doesn't. The PoA holder only acts on your behalf — you remain the owner and the seller, so the capital gain is yours and the tax is computed in your hands, not theirs.

That matters for the TDS, because the buyer is paying a non-resident and so deducts under Section 195 at the NRI rate, and that TDS must be credited against your PAN, not the PoA holder's. If the buyer mistakenly deposits it against the PoA holder's PAN, the credit won't show in your records, the certificate can't reconcile it, and the repatriation stalls — so the single most important instruction to give the buyer is to use the NRI seller's PAN for the deduction. The sale agreement and the PoA should make clear the seller is the non-resident, so the buyer applies the right rate against the right PAN from the start.

Once the sale completes, the proceeds go into your NRO account and repatriate the usual way — the gain settled, the Section 195 TDS reconciled against your PAN, and the certificate carrying the money out within the USD 1 million route. A clean PoA and the buyer using the correct PAN are what keep the later remittance from snagging.

Before the bank moves sale proceeds abroad, it asks for a specific bundle of paperwork, and people are often unsure what actually goes in it. At its core it is two documents working together: a certificate from a practising chartered accountant confirming the tax on the gain is dealt with (Form 15CB), and your own online declaration that quotes that certificate (Form 15CA). Alongside them the bank keeps the sale deed and proof that the Section 195 TDS was deducted, so its file shows the money leaving India is taxed money.

From FY 2026-27 (remittances on or after 1 April 2026) these two forms are being replaced by a new pair under the Income-tax Act, 2025: Form 145 (your declaration, the successor to 15CA) and Form 146 (the CA's certificate, the successor to 15CB). The structure is much the same — Form 145 has parts depending on the transfer, and the CA's Form 146 is needed where the taxable remittance for the year is above ₹5 lakh and you go the CA-certificate route rather than an assessing-officer order. For a property sale of any real size, that means the CA certificate is effectively always part of the pack.

The practical effect on you is small: it is the same job — certify the gain, file the declaration, hand the bank a clean pack — under renamed forms. The CA you work with files on whichever set applies to the date your money actually moves, since it is the payment date that decides which forms govern, not when the sale was agreed.