- Form 15CA is your declaration. You file it yourself on the income tax portal, before the money leaves.
- Form 15CB is a certificate signed by a Chartered Accountant confirming what the money is and what tax was paid on it.
- You do not always need both. Which part of 15CA you file depends on the amount and on whether the remittance is taxable at all.
- The bank is the one enforcing this. It is their compliance obligation, not a formality they can waive for you.
- Getting it wrong carries a penalty of one lakh rupees per default under Section 271-I, separate from any tax owed.
What the two forms actually are
Form 15CA is an online declaration filed by the person sending the money. It tells the Income Tax Department who is remitting, to whom, how much, why, and what tax has been deducted. It sits on the e-filing portal under your PAN and takes minutes once you have the underlying facts straight.
Form 15CB is a certificate from a Chartered Accountant. The CA examines the source of the money, decides whether it is chargeable to tax in India, applies the right rate, checks whether a tax treaty reduces that rate, and certifies the whole thing. It is filed by the CA against their own membership number, and the acknowledgement number it generates is what you quote inside Form 15CA.
The legal basis for both is Rule 37BB of the Income-tax Rules, read with Section 195. The short way to think about it: 15CB is the opinion, 15CA is the declaration that relies on it, and the bank is the party that has to see both before it can act.
Which part of Form 15CA applies to you
Form 15CA has four parts, and you file exactly one of them. This is where most of the confusion lives, because people assume they always need a CA certificate. Often they do not.
| Part | When it applies | CA certificate needed? |
|---|---|---|
| Part A | The remittance is taxable, and the total in the financial year is five lakh rupees or less | No |
| Part B | Taxable, above five lakh, and you hold an order or certificate from the Assessing Officer | No |
| Part C | Taxable, above five lakh, and no such order was obtained | Yes, Form 15CB |
| Part D | The remittance is not chargeable to tax in India at all | No |
It is not five lakh per transfer. It is the aggregate of taxable remittances in that financial year. Three transfers of two lakh each cross it, and the third one needs Part C and a 15CB even though no single transfer looked large.
When you do not need them at all
Rule 37BB carries a specified list of payment types that are exempt from both forms, mostly personal and government transactions: travel, education, medical treatment, family maintenance, imports, and similar. If your remittance falls squarely in that list, the bank should not be asking for anything.
The other common case is money moving out of an NRE or FCNR account. Those balances are freely repatriable by design, the funds arrived from abroad in the first place, and no 15CA or 15CB arises. The forms are an NRO problem, not an NRE problem, and that distinction is worth understanding before you decide which account income should land in.
The order things have to happen in
The step people skip is the second one. A CA cannot certify that tax has been paid on a gain nobody has computed yet, which is why a rushed remittance usually stalls at the certificate.
Where NRIs actually get stuck
The forms themselves are rarely the problem. The facts behind them are.
- No PAN, or a PAN that is still tagged to a resident address and an old status. Form 15CA cannot be filed without an active PAN.
- The CA is asked to certify a property sale where the capital gain has never been computed and the buyer's TDS is not visible in Form 26AS yet.
- Money that should have gone into an NRO account went into an old resident savings account instead, which makes the source hard to document and creates a separate FEMA problem.
- Inherited money with no paper trail linking the deceased, the heir and the account.
- A remittance treated as non-taxable under Part D when it is actually taxable, which is the version that attracts penalties later.
That third one is common enough to be worth fixing before anything else. If your Indian income is still landing in a resident savings account, the account itself needs to be redesignated before you start thinking about remittance paperwork.
Section 271-I provides for a penalty of one lakh rupees for failing to furnish the information, or for furnishing information that is inaccurate. It applies to the remitter. It is separate from the tax and interest on whatever was actually owed.
How this fits the one million dollar route
For most NRIs the forms show up inside a larger process: moving up to one million US dollars per financial year out of an NRO account. The limit, the documentation and the bank's role in that route are covered separately, and the 15CA and 15CB sit inside it as the tax clearance step rather than as a standalone exercise.
Inherited money follows the same path but needs an extra layer of proof about how you came to own it, which is where most inheritance remittances lose time.
Can I file Form 15CA myself, or does it have to go through a CA?
You file 15CA yourself on the income tax e-filing portal under your own PAN. Only 15CB has to be signed and filed by a Chartered Accountant, and only when Part C applies.
Do I need a new 15CA and 15CB for every transfer?
Yes. Both are per remittance, not annual. If you split one repatriation across three transfers, the bank will expect the paperwork for each of them.
My money is in an NRE account. Do I still need these forms?
No. NRE and FCNR balances are freely repatriable and the forms do not arise. The requirement attaches to NRO remittances, where the money was earned in India and tax has to be accounted for.
The buyer deducted TDS on my property sale. Is that enough?
No. TDS deducted is not the same as tax correctly computed. The CA certifying 15CB has to look at the actual capital gain, which is frequently different from the amount the buyer withheld.
Can this be done without me travelling to India?
Yes. The filing is online and the CA work is done on documents. What usually forces a trip is something else in the chain, such as a signature the bank wants in person, and that is normally solved with a properly drawn Power of Attorney.
This article is for general information only and reflects rules current as of 2026. It is not legal, tax, or financial advice. Rules, rates and procedures change, so please confirm the current position with a qualified professional before acting.