• Notification Date: 15-12-2022
• Notification No: N/A

Non-resident Taxpayers entitled to file Form 10F Manually for claiming TDS Benefit till March 31

The non-resident taxpayers who do not have PAN to file Form 10F have been allowed by the Income Tax department to manually file the form till March 31, 2023. This move has been initiated by the income tax department with the expectation that it would ease their compliance burden and enable them to claim lower TDS rate.  

Previously, the Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) had made it mandatory in July for the non-resident taxpayers to file Form 10F electronically to claim benefit of lower Tax Deducted at Source (TDS). But the taxpayers faced problems in electronic filing of the form as the income tax portal did not allow a taxpayer who does not have a Permanent Account Number (PAN) to file Form 10F. 
 
To provide a solution, the CBDT said in a notification that in order to mitigate genuine hardship of these taxpayers, it has been decided that such category of non-resident taxpayers who do not have PAN, are not required to have PAN. Under relevant provisions of the I-T Act would be exempted from mandatory electronic filing of Form 10F till March 31, 2023. 
 

In a notification dated December 12, the CBDT said that it is reiterated that such category of taxpayers may make statutory compliance of filing Form 10F till March 31, 2023 in manual form as was being done prior to issuance of the (July) notification. 
 

Nangia Andersen LLP M&A Tax Partner Sandeep Jhunjhunwala said that related to the notified transactions requiring quoting of PAN, the non-residents can transact with Indian parties without the aversion of a higher 20 per cent withholding tax rate if prescribed details such as name, e-mail id, address, contact number, TIN and a valid tax residency certificate (TRC) are furnished to resident Indian payer. 

"The partial relaxation notified by the CBDT would definitely eliminate the compliance pinpricks around the requirement of obtaining PAN by non-residents, only for the purpose of obtaining electronic 10F. The easing up, however, is only till March 31, 2023 and non-residents may want to keep their fingers crossed on further developments related to digital shift of compliances in India," Jhunjhunwala said.