Wake-up call for individual taxpayers! Foreign assets reporting in focus - what you should know
Times of India
by RAVI JAINFebruary 19, 2026
AI-Generated Deep Dive Summary
India’s foreign assets reporting framework has entered a new era of stringent enforcement, with Budget 2026 signaling a shift toward technology-driven compliance. The Indian tax authorities are now leveraging global information exchange mechanisms like the Common Reporting Standard (CRS) and Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA) to systematically detect discrepancies between reported foreign income/assets and actual data received from overseas金融机构。This marks a significant departure from suspicion-based audits, as granular, account-level data is matched against Indian Income-tax returns using advanced algorithms.
The framework’s evolution has been marked by key milestones, including the introduction of Schedule FA in 2011-12, the Black Money Act of 2015, and the operationalization of CRS and FATCA. By 2024-25, the CBDT launched a compliance-cum-awareness campaign, followed by a one-time amnesty window for small taxpayers under FAST-DS in 2026. These measures reflect India’s alignment with global transparency standards while maintaining its unique legal framework, which mandates Resident and Ordinarily Resident (ROR) individuals to disclose all foreign assets—whether dormant, low-balance, or income-generating—in their tax returns.
Compared to jurisdictions like the U.S., where reporting is citizenship and residency-based and involves dual reporting to IRS and FinCEN under the Bank Secrecy Act, India’s system integrates disclosure within the tax return while coupling it with stringent penalties for non-compliance under the Black Money Act. This framework underscores the government’s commitment to reducing financial opacity and ensuring that taxpayers meet their global compliance obligations.
For readers interested in global financial transparency, India’s approach highlights the growing importance of aligning national tax policies with international standards. As countries increasingly share financial data through mechanisms like CRS and FATCA, the era of non-disclosure is coming to an end. Tax authorities now have access to detailed, structured information that enables them to identify discrepancies quickly and enforce compliance effectively.
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Originally published on Times of India on 2/19/2026