Chartered Accountant · ICAI M.No. 153926 · FRN 136869W · Reviewed on 12 October 2026
Why there is so much to claim
The buyer deducts on the whole sale price; you are taxed only on the gain. Sell a flat for ₹1 crore with a ₹20-lakh long-term gain and TDS at the effective 14.30% (12.5% plus 10% surcharge plus cess) is ₹14.3 lakh, while tax on the gain is about ₹2.6 lakh — roughly ₹11.7 lakh refundable. It arrives only after the return is filed and processed: for a sale in FY 2025-26 the original due date was 31 July 2026, and the belated window stays open until 31 December 2026.
Step by step
Check the credit: the buyer must have reported the deduction — in Form 27Q (Form 144 for payments from 1 April 2026), or in Form 141 if an individual or HUF buyer used the no-TAN route from 1 October 2026 — and issued your certificate (Form 16A, now Form 131; Form 132 on the Form 141 route). Compute the gain: long-term after 24 months, taxed at 12.5% for transfers from 23 July 2024; NRIs do not get the indexation option residents keep for property bought before that date. File: ITR-2 for a FY 2025-26 sale; the tax-year 2026-27 return under the Income-tax Act 2025 for later sales. Bank: pre-validate an Indian account — an NRO account works — so the refund has somewhere to land.
Better still: don’t let it get blocked
A refund is the slow road — the money sits with the department until processing. The faster route is a lower or nil TDS certificate obtained before the sale: Form 13 under section 197 for applications up to 31 March 2026, Form 128 under section 395(1) of the Income-tax Act 2025 from 1 April 2026, so the buyer deducts close to your real tax in the first place. Model both routes with our NRI property TDS calculator, or let our NRI property-sale practice run the certificate, the return and the refund follow-up.