Nri: property sale where main owner is resident and i was nri

Gurunath Kale (3 Points)

25 March 2019  

Hi All

Background-  I bought 2 bhk flat in Oct 2013 where I had put my mother as main owner and I as co-owner. And taken home loan a joint applicant, where consideration was I will do all the payment my mother being housewife. Agreement was done in Oct 2013 and  in Nov 2013 I went abroad for around 5 years. In these 5 years I repaid most of my housing loan using my out of India earnings. I didn't had any earnings in India and didn't paid income tax for year 2015/16/17

Current Scenario- I am back in India for good, in Nov 2018 and holding resident account status and all my NRO/NRE accounts converted to resident account. I have resumed from my India office and started earning in India and will be filing income tax for 2018/19.

I want to sale the flat now (April 2019) with some capital gain associated with it.

Questions-

  1. If I ask buyer to do transaction with me only (that is with my resident bank account and TDS using my PAN). What this means from Tax perspective, should TDS be 22.6 % or 1 %.?
  2. Though property was jointly hold, i don't want transaction with my Mother's account. Would that have some consequences from tax and capital gain perspective?

Hope this experts here can guide me. (TBH, I had discussion with two of my CA friends but got different friends and got two contrasting answers hence want to put these question to this wider forum)

Regards

Guru