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By the NRIWallah team · Last reviewed: July 2026

NRI Property Sale TDS Calculator

TDS comes off the whole sale price, not your profit — see the gap, and what a Form 13 certificate saves you

How this works: When an NRI sells property in India, the buyer must deduct TDS on the entire sale price — not on your profit. This works out what gets withheld at completion, what you actually owe on the gain, and the difference: money locked up with the tax department until you file a return and claim it back. A Form 13 certificate obtained before completion closes that gap.

The sale

For inherited property, use the original owner's cost.

Renovation, brokerage, legal fees — all deductible from the gain.

Holding period & relief

30% for most NRI sellers with other Indian income.

Another Indian residential property (s.54) or up to ₹50 lakh of capital gains bonds (s.54EC). Reduces the gain, not the sale price.

What the buyer withholds vs what you actually owe

TDS withheld at completion

Tax you actually owe

on a gain of

Locked up as a refund claim

Without Form 13

Sale price
Less TDS deducted
In your NRO account

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With a Form 13 certificate

Sale price
Less TDS at your real rate
In your NRO account

≈

How the TDS is built up

Deducted on
Base rate
Basic tax
Surcharge ()
Health & education cess (4%)
Total withheld

Your actual capital gain

Sale price
Less purchase cost
Less improvements & costs
Less s.54 / 54EC relief
Taxable gain
Tax on it

No taxable gain on these figures — but TDS is still deducted on the full sale price unless you hold a Form 13 certificate.

What to do with this. Apply for a Form 13 lower-TDS certificate as soon as a buyer is identified — it takes 3–6 weeks and names that specific buyer, so it cannot be left to the last week. Check the buyer has a TAN and knows they must deduct under section 195, not the 1% that applies to resident sellers; the liability falls on them if they get it wrong. Then plan the money out: proceeds land in your NRO account and move abroad under the USD 1 million annual limit with Forms 15CA/15CB.

Estimates for FY 2025-26 / AY 2026-27 on rules current at the last review. Assumes the gain is your only Indian income for surcharge purposes and applies the long-term rate without indexation. Your assessing officer determines the actual certificate rate. Excludes any tax due in your country of residence. Not tax advice — see the full property sale guide.

Talk to an NRI property-sale CA

Get matched with a vetted chartered accountant who handles NRI TDS, Form 13 applications, and repatriation paperwork — free, no obligation.

Something went wrong. Please email admin@nriwallah.com directly.

Free to use. NRIWallah may receive a referral fee from the professional, never from you — how we make money.

Common Questions

Because the buyer has no reliable way to know your gain. They do not know what you paid, what you spent on improvements, or whether you qualify for reinvestment relief — and under section 195 they are personally liable if they under-deduct. So the law makes them withhold against the full consideration at the rate applicable to your gains, and leaves it to you to reclaim the excess. It is a cash-flow rule, not a measure of what you owe. The only mechanism that changes it is a certificate from the assessing officer, which is what Form 13 provides.
Longer than most sellers expect. You cannot claim it until you file your Indian return for the financial year in which the sale happened, which means waiting until after 31 March, then filing, then waiting for processing and the refund to reach your NRO account. Twelve to eighteen months from completion is normal, and a scrutiny notice or a mismatch in Form 26AS can extend it further. If the money is earmarked for something — a purchase abroad, a mortgage deposit — that delay matters more than the tax itself.
Almost always, on any sale of size. A chartered accountant typically charges a few tens of thousands of rupees to prepare and file it, against a withholding reduction that regularly runs into lakhs. The one thing you cannot do is leave it late: certificates take three to six weeks, are issued for a named buyer, and must be in the buyer’s hands before they make payment. Apply as soon as a buyer is identified. Our Form 13 guide covers the documents and the usual rejection reasons.
Tell the assessing officer in the Form 13 application. If you are buying another Indian residential property under section 54, or putting up to ₹50 lakh into capital gains bonds under 54EC, your actual liability may be close to zero — and the certificate can reflect that, reducing the withholding to a nominal rate. Without the certificate the buyer still deducts against the full sale price regardless of your reinvestment plans. Note both reliefs require investment in India; buying property abroad does not qualify.
No — it covers the Indian side only. If you are tax-resident in the UK, US, Canada, or Australia, the same gain is generally reportable at home with a foreign tax credit for the Indian tax under the treaty. Watch for the currency trap: your home country may compute the gain in its own currency from the original purchase date, which can produce a very different figure from the rupee gain shown here. The DTAA estimator covers how the credit works.
No. The 1% rate under section 194-IA applies only when the seller is resident in India. Selling as an NRI falls under section 195, and a buyer who deducts 1% has under-deducted — the shortfall, plus interest and penalty, is recoverable from them, not from you. This surfaces late in a surprising number of sales because many resident buyers have never dealt with it and do not hold a TAN. Raise it during negotiation rather than at the registration office.

Related tools & guides

Full Property Sale Guide

Lower TDS Certificate (Form 13)

Repatriation Calculator

The Number That Blindsides NRI Sellers

A resident Indian selling a flat has 1% deducted at source. An NRI selling the same flat has tax deducted on the entire sale consideration at capital gains rates — routinely 13% to 15% of the whole price for a long-term holding, and over 30% for a short-term one. On a ₹2 crore sale that is roughly ₹30 lakh withheld at completion, whether your actual gain was ₹80 lakh or nothing at all.

The tax is not wrong, and the money is not gone. But the amount withheld bears no relationship to what you owe, and the difference sits with the Income Tax Department until you file a return and claim it back. This calculator shows both numbers side by side — what the buyer must deduct, and what you genuinely owe on the gain — so the gap is visible before you sign anything rather than after.

Why the Gap Is Wider Than It Looks

Two rules compound. The first is the base: TDS is computed on the sale price while your liability is computed on the gain, so the larger the proportion of the price that represents your original cost, the more the withholding overshoots. Someone selling an inherited property with a low recorded cost sees a modest overshoot; someone who bought recently at close to the sale price sees an enormous one.

The second is surcharge. India’s surcharge steps up with the sum being assessed — 10% above ₹50 lakh, 15% above ₹1 crore, and higher bands for short-term gains. For TDS that step is set by the sale price, while for your real liability it is set by the much smaller gain. So a ₹2 crore sale can attract surcharge on the withholding while the actual tax on the gain sits in a lower band, or none at all. The calculator applies each correctly rather than assuming a single flat percentage.

Form 13 Is the Whole Game

The fix is a lower-TDS certificate under Form 13, filed with the jurisdictional assessing officer before the sale completes. The officer reviews your expected gain, including any reinvestment relief you intend to claim, and directs the buyer to deduct at a rate matched to your real liability. On a typical sale this converts a withholding of 13-15% of the sale value into low single digits, and the “With a Form 13 certificate” panel above shows exactly what that means for the cash reaching your account on completion day.

The constraint is timing, not eligibility. Certificates take three to six weeks, and they name a specific buyer, so the application cannot begin until you have one — and cannot be left until the week of registration. Sellers who lose money here almost never lose it because they were refused; they lose it because they applied too late, or not at all. Once the proceeds land, the repatriation calculator covers moving them abroad within the USD 1 million annual limit, and the full property sale guide walks through the capital gains exemptions in detail.

NRIWallah does not provide tax advice. Figures are estimates for FY 2025-26 / AY 2026-27, assume the gain is your only Indian income for surcharge purposes, and exclude any liability in your country of residence. Your assessing officer determines the actual certificate rate. Speak to a qualified chartered accountant before completing a sale — NRIWallah may receive a referral fee from the professional, never from you ( how we make money ).

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