Singapore is the most used route into India — and the most tested.

Dividends are capped at 10% where the Singapore recipient is a company holding at least 25% of the shares of the Indian payer, and 15% in all other cases — note that the shareholding threshold is higher than the 10% used in the US treaty. Interest is capped at 10% where the beneficial owner is a bank or similar financial institution carrying on a bona fide banking business, and 15% otherwise. Royalties and fees for technical services are both capped at 10%. Each of these is a ceiling available only when the treaty is properly claimed and the limitation-of-benefits conditions are met.

It is an anti-conduit provision: a Singapore entity is not entitled to the reduced rates or to the capital gains treatment if its affairs were arranged with the primary purpose of obtaining those benefits, and specifically if it is a shell or conduit company with negligible or nil business operations. The test is not purely subjective — there is an expenditure requirement, measured on operating spend in Singapore over a defined period immediately before the income arises. That is deliberately hard to satisfy retrospectively, which is the point: incorporating a Singapore company shortly before a transaction and claiming relief on it does not work.

It ended the arrangement under which gains on the sale of shares in an Indian company by a Singapore resident were taxable only in Singapore, which in practice meant not taxed at all. Shares acquired on or after 1 April 2017 lost that exemption, with a transitional period during which a reduced share of the Indian rate applied, and full Indian taxation after it. Shares acquired before 1 April 2017 remain grandfathered. The practical consequence is that the acquisition date of each tranche of shares governs its treatment, so a holding built up across that date has to be tracked tranche by tranche rather than treated as one block.

Often yes, but for different reasons than a decade ago. The capital gains advantage has gone for new investment, so the case now rests on the withholding rates, the quality of Singapore as a place to actually run a regional business, its own treaty network and the commercial and legal environment. What no longer works is using it purely as a conduit: with the limitation-of-benefits article and India's domestic anti-avoidance rules, a company with no people and no spending will not obtain the relief. If the Singapore entity is a real regional headquarters, the treaty is useful. If it is a nameplate, it is a liability.

Less generously, and this catches groups that assume all treaties work the same way. The India-US treaty only taxes technical and consultancy fees where the service makes technical knowledge available to the payer, which removes a large category of ordinary consulting from Indian tax. The India-Singapore treaty has a fees-for-technical-services article capped at 10% without that make-available condition applying in the same way, so the fee is generally within the charge at the treaty rate. A group that routes the same service through Singapore rather than the US may therefore find it taxable where it would not have been.

Enough that its business is genuinely carried on there, assessed on facts rather than form. In practice that means directors who are in Singapore and actually make decisions there, board minutes that record real deliberation, employees appropriate to what the company does, premises, bank accounts operated from Singapore, and real operating expenditure meeting the treaty's spending requirement. It is worth documenting this as it happens — contemporaneous evidence of where decisions were taken is much more persuasive than a reconstruction prepared when the question is asked.

Yes, and the treaty includes a service permanent establishment provision, so a Singapore company that furnishes services in India through people present here beyond the specified period can be treated as having one without any office at all. There is also a dependent agent rule where someone in India habitually concludes contracts for it. Where a PE exists, the Singapore company must file an Indian return and pay Indian tax on the profits attributable to the PE, which is a quite different exposure from withholding on a fee.

A Singapore tax residency certificate covering the relevant period and the declaration in Form 41, both before the remittance rather than afterwards, and then Form 145 for the remittance with an accountant's certificate in Form 146 where required. Where the limitation-of-benefits article is in issue the residency certificate is necessary but not sufficient — the payer may reasonably ask for evidence of substance too, and a prudent Indian payer does, because the exposure for under-withholding sits with it rather than with you.

It depends first on when the shares were acquired. For shares acquired before 1 April 2017 the grandfathered treatment may still apply. For shares acquired afterwards, the gain is taxable in India under domestic law — currently at the long-term rate applying to a non-resident on unlisted shares, plus surcharge and cess, with the buyer withholding at source. The transfer is also reported in FC-TRS where the buyer is resident, and the price cannot exceed fair value in that case. Model this before signing: the tax is frequently the largest single line in a sale and it is not negotiable afterwards.

India and Singapore have both engaged with the multilateral convention implementing treaty-related anti-avoidance measures, and it introduces a principal purpose test alongside the treaty's own limitation-of-benefits article. The practical effect is that there are now two overlapping anti-abuse tests to satisfy rather than one, and a structure that would once have passed on technical compliance with the LOB conditions can still fail on purpose. It reinforces the same conclusion: substance decides the outcome.