Sold Without Form 13? 8 Things to Fix Before It Costs More

The most common shock: the buyer deducted 12.5–20% TDS at closing, but the deposit never shows up in your Form 26AS because the buyer missed the 30-day deadline or picked the wrong form (Form 26QB at 1% instead of Form 27Q at 12.5–20%).

Log in to incometax.gov.in and pull Form 26AS for the year of sale. Every rupee the buyer deducted should show with their TAN and the challan number (CIN). If it doesn't match by month-end after sale, chase the buyer in writing. Missing 27Q deposits carry penalty up to ₹1 lakh under Section 271H on the buyer — which they'll then try to bury by "forgetting."

No 26AS entry means no refund claim. This step has to succeed before anything else in this list matters.

After each TDS deposit, the buyer must issue you Form 16A — the TDS certificate showing what was deducted and when. Due within 15 days of each deposit's quarterly due date.

Get every single Form 16A in writing. Without them, ITR refund claims get rejected or delayed 6–18 months. The buyer must download these from TRACES (tdscpc.gov.in) and send them to you.

If the buyer is dragging, send a formal email citing Section 203 and the 271H penalty exposure. Most buyers comply within a week when the words "₹1 lakh penalty" appear.

The refund comes from one place only: your Income Tax Return with the sale declared in Schedule CG (Capital Gains) and the TDS claimed in Schedule TDS2.

Deadlines:

The calculation: gain = sale price − (cost basis × indexation if pre-23-July-2024 sale, else raw cost) − transfer expenses − Section 54 / 54F / 54EC reinvestment deductions. Tax on the remaining gain + Section 244A interest from 1 April of the AY until refund date.

For most NRIs, the refund process takes 3–6 months from ITR filing with e-verification done promptly.

If you missed both 31 July and 31 December, normal ITR filing is closed. But the CBDT allows a backward-filing petition under Section 119(2)(b) for "genuine hardship" cases — up to 6 years back.

The petition typically includes:

Condonation is discretionary. Well-documented NRI cases get approved in roughly 60–70% of filings we've seen, especially where the delay was caused by the buyer's non-cooperation or KYC portal issues.

Processing: 3–9 months from petition to approval. Once approved, the ITR is filed under the same notice number and the refund processes normally.

Your sale proceeds are sitting in an NRO account. To wire them to your home-country bank, two forms are compulsory for any amount above USD 5,000:

Without both, the authorised dealer bank refuses the outward wire. Money earns 4–5% in NRO while you're locked out of your own funds.

Repatriation cap: USD 1 million per financial year under NRI LRS-linked rules. If sale proceeds exceed that, split across FYs or tranches. The 15CA/15CB pair is filed per remittance, not per year.

If you're a US or UK resident, the same capital gain gets reported on your US Form 1040 / UK Self Assessment as well. To avoid paying tax twice, claim a Foreign Tax Credit for the Indian tax paid.

On the Indian side, this works the other way: if your home country credit exceeds the Indian tax, nothing extra happens here. If the Indian tax was higher (rare for property gains in US/UK), you claim Form 67 to get credit for your home-country tax against Indian liability.

Form 67 must be filed on or before the ITR due date under Rule 128 — not with the ITR, before or alongside. Late filing risks disallowance. For US NRIs, the US tax return deadline with automatic 2-month extension (15 June for overseas filers) often lands just after India's 31 July — plan accordingly.

Even after the sale, capital-gains tax can be reduced or eliminated by reinvesting within specific windows.

If you haven't bought the new house yet by the next ITR due date, deposit the unspent amount into a Capital Gains Account Scheme (CGAS) account at an authorised bank. That preserves the tax deferral until the full 2-year or 3-year window closes.

If you move back to India after the sale, your year-of-return ITR includes Schedule FA. This is where you disclose every foreign asset you held during the financial year — bank accounts, brokerage, insurance-investment policies, foreign pension equivalents, directorships, foreign crypto wallets.

If a US brokerage held your sale proceeds for even one day of the FY, or you had a Chase checking account at any point — disclose it. Under CRS and FATCA, the Indian AO already sees those balances within 12–18 months. Silent non-disclosure isn't a strategy.

The good news: almost every case we handle clears through ordinary disclosure in the year-of-return ITR. The Black Money Act exists for genuine concealment, not for paperwork delays. Clean disclosure, filed on time, converts the liability into ordinary tax compliance.

For NRIs still abroad: Schedule FA doesn't apply yet. The year you return, it becomes mandatory. Plan the disclosure before the move, not after.