Managing a Rental in India From Australia: Foreign Income Offset, Time Zones and Remittance

Where the rent goes on your Australian return

In myTax, Indian rent goes under "Other foreign income" (type: foreign rental income), not in the Australian rental property section; on the paper supplementary return it is item 20, label R, "Net foreign rent". Add back the Indian TDS so that the income figure is before foreign tax, then claim your deductible expenses for the flat. myTax treats interest separately, so check the instructions or ask your tax agent.

The foreign income tax offset (FITO)

• You can claim a foreign income tax offset for tax you paid on the rental income in India.
• The tax must actually be paid. Tax that is refundable or only payable later does not count yet. For Indian rent this means the TDS counts, but any refund you later receive reduces the offset; file your Indian return so that the final Indian tax is known.
• If your offset is A$1,000 or less you can claim it without working out the offset limit, according to ATO instructions; above that, you must calculate the limit.
• The offset is non-refundable and cannot be carried forward. If you pay foreign tax after the income year, the ATO allows up to four years to amend an assessment.

The comparison with other countries is in our DTAA guide. Always keep the TDS certificates and your Indian return as evidence.

Indian tax first

Your tenant deducts about 31.2% of each payment (from April 2026). Because the ATO offset counts only tax that has been paid and is final, filing your Indian return promptly gives you a clean number to claim. If your Indian tax will be small, a lower deduction certificate keeps your cash out of the refund queue.

The time-zone routine

Eastern Australia is 4.5 hours ahead of India during standard time and 5.5 hours ahead during daylight saving, so a 9 am call in Sydney lands at about 4:30 am in India. A 4 pm call in Sydney reaches India at about 11:30 am, a good time to talk to a caretaker or tenant. Western Australia is closer, at 2.5 hours ahead.

Moving the rent

Rent is credited to your NRO account; remit it with the Form 145 / 146 process once tax is settled. Record each month's rupee amount and the date, so you can convert to Australian dollars for your return.

Checklist

• NRO account, Indian mobile, PAN.
• Written agreement with a TDS clause, deposit terms and a maintenance split.
• A tenant with a TAN who deducts tax each month.
• A calendar for the Indian filing date (31 July for most individuals) and the Australian tax year (1 July to 30 June).
• A limited authorisation letter for a caretaker (PoA guide).
• myTax also asks whether your overseas assets, including the Indian flat, were worth A$50,000 or more; answer it.

Where Rent Connect fits

Most of this is admin that someone has to remember every month. Rent Connect is a property management tool for owners who rent out property in India, currently in early access. It sends WhatsApp rent reminders, records each payment as pending, overdue or paid, and generates a rent receipt when a payment is marked paid. Tenant details, the agreement and maintenance issues (with photos) sit on one tenancy record, and a Deposit Ledger records the agreed deposit and any move-out deductions. The ledger is a shared record only: Rent Connect does not hold the money.

It does not file police intimations, compute or deposit TDS, or file tax returns for you. Those stay with you, your tenant and your CA. To follow the launch, join the waitlist.

How this page was checked

Figures here were compiled on 16 October 2026 from the sources below. Where we could not open an official page, the note at the end says so. Government portals and rates change, so confirm the live number or form with the office before you pay or file.

• ATO: foreign source income and foreign assets or property (supplementary return instructions)
• ATO: Guide to foreign income tax offset rules
• Rent Connect: DTAA and NRI rental income by country

What we could not verify: The ATO points were taken from search summaries of the 2025 supplementary return instructions and the 2026 FITO guide, not read in full. The year of the A$1,000 option should be checked against the current instructions.