NRI Property TDS Return Filing

Income-tax Act, 2025 — NRI Property TDS Return Filing (Form 144):
Where the seller in a property-purchase transaction is a non-resident, TDS return/statement filing is done through Form 144 under the Income-tax Act, 2025's non-resident-specific pathway — NOT Form 141/Schedule B, which applies only where the seller is a resident (Form 141/Schedule B replaced the erstwhile Form 26QB filed under Section 194-IA of the Income-tax Act, 1961, effective 1 April 2026). The buyer, as deductor, is responsible for filing Form 144 and subsequently issuing a Form 131 TDS certificate to the non-resident seller.
This distinction matters because the resident and non-resident property-TDS pathways carry separate forms and (historically, under Section 195 versus Section 194-IA of the Income-tax Act, 1961) separate rate-determination processes (deduction on the seller's full applicable capital-gains rate versus the resident 1% TDS under the erstwhile Section 194-IA) — using the wrong pathway is a common and consequential filing error.
The specific filing timeline, format, and procedural requirements of Form 144 under the Income-tax Act, 2025 have not been independently verified against a first-party source this round beyond confirming that Form 144 (not Form 141/Schedule B) is the correct filing route for a non-resident seller; these specifics should be confirmed before being asserted as settled procedure in client-facing content.

Where TDS is deducted from payments to an NRI seller, the buyer must report the deduction through the applicable non-resident TDS return framework under the Income-tax Act, 2025 and Rules, 2026. We prepare the return, validate payment mapping, file it and track acknowledgement/defaults.