Inheriting or receiving a gift from India as a Thailand resident

First the India side, which is simple: India has no inheritance tax and no gift tax, and the income-tax law exempts anything you receive under a will, by inheritance, or as a gift from a relative, under the proviso to Section 56(2)(x), so the Indian receipt is tax-free. Thailand is the country to look at carefully, because unlike Singapore, the UAE or most of the region, it actually has an inheritance tax. It charges 10 per cent, reduced to 5 per cent for parents and children, on the value of an inheritance above 100 million baht from any one person, with a spouse fully exempt.

But for a typical Indian expat, two independent limits keep an Indian inheritance outside the Thai charge. The first is who is taxed on worldwide assets. The worldwide reach applies only to a Thai national, or to a foreigner who is a permanent resident under Thai immigration law, which is a specific, hard-to-get status, not the same as simply living in Thailand or being tax-resident by days. A foreigner on a work, retirement or long-stay visa is not a permanent resident, and so is taxed only on assets situated in Thailand, not on an Indian inheritance. The second limit is the asset list: the tax only reaches specified assets, essentially Thai immovable property, Thai securities, money in Thai financial institutions and Thai-registered vehicles. Indian shares, Indian bank deposits and Indian property fall outside that list. So whether you look at who is taxed or what is taxed, an Indian inheritance to an Indian expat almost always falls outside Thai inheritance tax.

There is a second Thai rule people confuse with inheritance tax, and it is worth keeping separate. Since 2024, Thailand taxes a Thai tax resident, someone in the country 180 days or more in a year, on foreign-source income that they bring into Thailand. The key point is that an inheritance is a capital receipt, not income, so bringing the inherited money into Thailand is not caught by this remittance rule. What the rule can catch is later foreign income, so if the inherited Indian property earns rent and you remit that rent into Thailand, the rent can be taxable there at normal rates. The inheritance itself is not, only the income it later produces.

So the honest picture for an Indian expat in Thailand is that the inheritance is almost certainly free of Thai tax, from both the inheritance tax and the remittance rule, with only two narrow things to watch: the rare case of an actual Thai permanent resident inheriting an asset the tax can reach, and the ongoing Indian rent if you remit it. There is no inheritance treaty between Thailand and India, but none is needed. Our role is the Indian end: the legal heir paperwork, a valuation of the Indian asset, a certificate confirming no Indian death tax, and repatriation of the funds to you.