India Withholding tax rates
India Withholding tax rates: no single figure applies. The reason is set out below, cited to the governing instrument. Last checked against the official source on 10 Aug 2026.
The taxes India levies on dividends, interest, royalties and fees for technical services (FTS) earned by non-residents and foreign companies - historically section 115A of the Income-tax Act 1961, carried forward as section 207 of the Income-tax Act 2025 which replaced the 1961 Act from 1 April 2026 - collected by deduction at source under the withholding provisions. Base rates are increased by surcharge and 4% health and education cess. Administered by the Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) / Income Tax Department.
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| Current value | structured — see the API |
|---|---|
| In force from | 2026-04-01 |
| Official source | Income-tax Act 2025 (Act 30 of 2025, assented 21 August 2025, in force 1 April 2026), section 207 - successor to Income-tax Act 1961 s.115A: dividends 20% (10% for IFSC-unit dividends), interest on foreign-currency borrowings from Government or an Indian concern 20%, infrastructure-debt-fund interest 5%, royalties and fees for technical services 20% |
| Last verified | 2026-08-10 |
| Verification | secondary — Corroborated, but the primary instrument was NOT read (usually the publishing host blocks automated access). The official incometaxindia.gov.in and indiankanoon full texts of s.207 (2025 Act) and s.115A (1961 Act) returned HTTP 403 to automated retrieval, so the operative words could not be quoted verbatim from the statute. Rates are corroborated across a clause-by-clause s.207-vs-s.115A comparison (TaxTMI note 1657) and multiple practitioner analyses of the Finance Act 2023 amendment; treat as secondary until the statute text is quoted directly. |
| Provenance | source fingerprint |
What this value means
THERE IS NO SINGLE WITHHOLDING TAX RATE, WHICH IS WHY value IS NULL. India applies 20% to dividends, royalties and FTS but different rates to different interest instruments (20% general, 5% concessional categories), and a caller wanting a number must name which payment type; read withholding_rates rather than expecting a headline figure. ALL RATES ARE DOMESTIC STATUTORY RATES, BEFORE TREATY RELIEF. A double-tax agreement can reduce any of them (many treaties cap royalties/FTS at 10-15%), and since the Finance Act 2023 rise the treaty rate is very often the lower one - but claiming it requires a Tax Residency Certificate and, in practice, Form 10F and possibly an Indian return. We do NOT serve treaty rates: they are bilateral, run to thousands of country pairs, and applying one is a legal determination rather than a lookup. SURCHARGE AND CESS: the base rates below are NOT the amounts actually withheld. They are increased by surcharge (for foreign companies: 2% where income exceeds INR 10 million, 5% above INR 100 million; for non-resident individuals: 10%/15%/25%/37% by slab) and by 4% health and education cess. For a foreign company a 20% base rate is effectively 20.8% (cess only), 21.216% (2% surcharge + cess) or 21.84% (5% surcharge + cess). STATUTE TRANSITION: the Income-tax Act 2025 replaced the Income-tax Act 1961 with effect from 1 April 2026 (tax year 2026-27). Section 207 of the 2025 Act carries the s.115A rates forward unchanged; the series effective_from is the new Act's commencement, while each rate's own effective date reflects when the percentage was last changed (royalties/FTS: 1 April 2023 by the Finance Act 2023, from 10% to 20%).
Get it programmatically
curl https://asiaref.dev/v1/in/withholding-tax
# $0.005 per call — x402 on Base (USDC). No key, no signup.
# History: curl https://asiaref.dev/v1/in/withholding-tax/history?from=2020-01-01
# Provenance: curl https://asiaref.dev/provenance/in/withholding-taxOther India series: RBI policy repo rate · Statutory late-payment interest · GST standard rate · VAT registration threshold · Minimum wage · Public holidays · CPI inflation (year-on-year) · Corporate income tax rate · Personal income tax bands · Statutory social-insurance contributions
The same figure elsewhere: Indonesia · Iraq · Israel · Japan · Jordan · all 28