Investing in India from the UK: A Quick-Start Guide

The India-UK DTAA is one of the more straightforwardly beneficial treaties for a retail investor: dividends are capped at 10% (well below India's 20.8% domestic rate) and interest at 15% (below the 31.2% domestic NRO rate). Both are worth claiming with a Tax Residency Certificate and Form 10F filed with your payer in advance -- unlike the US and Canada treaties, there is no large-shareholding carve-out that pushes the individual dividend rate above India's own domestic rate here.

UK-resident NRIs do not face the FATCA-driven AMC restrictions that specifically affect US and Canada NRIs -- the UK is not part of that particular US information-sharing regime. Instead, the UK participates in the OECD's Common Reporting Standard (CRS), a broader multilateral framework under which financial institutions report account information for automatic exchange between over 100 participating countries, India and the UK both included. In practice, this means most Indian AMCs onboard UK NRIs without the special friction US/Canada NRIs face -- but your Indian financial accounts are still visible to UK tax authorities via CRS reporting, so factor that into your own UK tax planning.

The standard NRE (UK-earned income brought to India, tax-free) plus NRO (India-sourced income, taxable) combination applies. There is no UK-specific account restriction beyond the general NRI rules covered in the NRE vs NRO vs FCNR guide on this site.