What Is Form 67 for Foreign Tax Credit? Deadline, Filing Steps and the New Form 44 Explained

Form 67 is the online statement a resident Indian files on the income tax portal to claim Foreign Tax Credit — the credit for tax already paid or deducted abroad on income that India also taxes. Skip it, and the same dollar of US dividend, foreign salary, or overseas freelance income gets taxed twice, because the return-processing system will not grant the credit claimed in the return without the form on record.

The subject matters right now for two reasons. Returns for AY 2026-27 are being filed this season, and the form works best when it goes in before the return, with a final legal window running to 31 March 2027. And the framework itself is changing: for income earned from 1 April 2026, the same filing operates as Form 44 under the new Income Tax Act, 2025, with a proposed Chartered Accountant certification for larger claims. This guide from CA Nainit Savla, Chartered Accountants in Mumbai and Hyderabad, explains who must file, the deadline, the credit computation, the documents, and the transition.

What Is Form 67 and Why Is It Needed for Foreign Tax Credit?

Form 67 is the statement prescribed by Rule 128 of the Income-tax Rules for claiming foreign tax credit in India, the relief that prevents double taxation of the same income. The right to the credit comes from Section 90 or 90A where India has a Double Taxation Avoidance Agreement (DTAA) with the other country, and from Section 91 as unilateral relief where no treaty exists; the form is the procedural bridge that carries that right into the return.

The reason it cannot be skipped is mechanical. The credit is claimed inside the return in Schedule TR, with the underlying foreign income disclosed in Schedule FSI, and the Centralised Processing Centre matches those schedules against the form filed on the portal. No form means no match, and the processing intimation simply drops the credit and raises a demand, however genuine the foreign tax was.

Who Should File Form 67 in India?

Any ordinarily resident taxpayer with foreign income that suffered tax abroad is in the frame. The foreign income of resident Indians is taxable in India on a global basis, which makes these the typical filers:

What Is the Deadline for Filing Form 67?

The legal deadline is the end of the relevant assessment year: for AY 2026-27, income of FY 2025-26, the form can go in up to 31 March 2027, provided the return itself was filed within the time allowed by Section 139(1) or Section 139(4). This relaxed window has applied since the CBDT's 2022 amendment; before that, the form had to precede the original return due date.

The working rule is stricter than the legal one: file the form before the return. When the form is already on the portal at the time the return is processed, the credit matches automatically; when it follows the return, disallowance in the intimation is common and must then be unwound through rectification. For an updated return, the sequence is mandatory, with the form filed before the updated return is furnished. Tribunal decisions have repeatedly treated the timing requirement as procedural, refusing to let a genuine treaty credit lapse for a late form, but that protection is a litigation remedy, not a filing strategy.

How Much Foreign Tax Credit Can You Claim Through Form 67?

The credit equals the lower of the foreign tax paid and the Indian tax payable on that same income, computed separately for each source of income from each country and then aggregated. Foreign figures convert to rupees at the TTBR exchange rate, the State Bank of India's Telegraphic Transfer Buying Rate on the last day of the month before the month in which the tax was paid or deducted.

Four boundaries shape the number. The credit sets off against tax, surcharge, and cess, but never against interest, fees, or penalties. Foreign tax that is under dispute abroad is not creditable until the dispute settles and evidence is furnished. Credit is available even where the Indian liability arises under MAT. And treaty rates apply only when the treaty applies, which is also why Indian investors give a tax residency certificate to foreign payers to get the correct withholding at source, keeping the eventual double taxation relief clean at both ends.

What Changes From 2026? Form 67 Becomes Form 44

For income earned from 1 April 2026, Tax Year 2026-27 under the Income-tax Act, 2025, the credit statement operates as Form 44 under the Income-tax Rules, 2026. The renumbering follows the pattern of the new income tax forms for 2026: the substance of Rule 128, the lower-of computation, country-wise reporting, and portal filing all carry over with a new label.

Two proposed tightenings in the draft rules deserve attention. A Chartered Accountant certificate is proposed wherever the foreign tax paid is Rs 1 lakh or more for individuals, and for all companies claiming the credit, replacing today's self-certification for larger claims. The new form also seeks the taxpayer's tax identification number in the foreign country, aligning the credit with information-exchange data. Anyone claiming sizeable credits from Tax Year 2026-27 should budget for certification and keep foreign TINs on file.

How Do You File Form 67 Online? Documents and Step-by-Step Process

The filing itself takes minutes once the file is ready; the work is in the documentation. Keep these ready before you start:

• Income and tax statement — a certificate or statement of the nature of the income and the foreign tax paid or deducted, from the foreign tax authority, the payer, or the deductor.
• Proof of payment or deduction — a withholding certificate such as US Form 1042-S or W-2, a foreign tax challan, or a bank statement showing the deduction.
• Self-attested statement — where the tax was deducted by the payer, a signed statement of the deduction supports the certificate.
• Rate working — the TTBR conversion for each month of deduction, so the rupee figures in the form reconcile to the certificates.

With the file ready, the sequence on the portal runs as follows:

1. Log In and Open the Form

   On the e-filing portal, go to e-File, then Income Tax Forms, select Form 67, and choose the correct assessment year before anything else.

2. Complete Part A Country-Wise

   Report each country and source of income, the foreign income, the foreign tax paid, the article of the treaty relied on, and the rupee conversion at TTBR.

3. Complete Part B Where Applicable

   Disclose any refund of foreign tax relating to a credit claimed earlier and any disputed foreign tax, which stays out of the claim until settled.

4. Attach the Evidence

   Upload the certificates, proof of payment, and statements as a single organised set, since the claim stands or falls on these attachments.

5. E-Verify the Form

   Submit with Aadhaar OTP, net banking, or a digital signature, and save the acknowledgement with the filing date on it.

6. File the Return With Matching Schedules

   File the ITR-2 or ITR-3, reporting the foreign income in Schedule FSI and the credit in Schedule TR with figures that mirror the form exactly.

What Happens If Form 67 Is Filed Late or the Credit Is Denied?

A missing or mismatched form usually surfaces as a processing adjustment: the intimation under Section 143(1) drops the credit and raises a demand with interest. The first remedy is procedural, filing the form if still within the assessment year and seeking rectification under Section 154 so the record and the claim finally match. Where the window has closed, taxpayers rely on the consistent tribunal position that Rule 128's timing is directory, pressing the claim in appeal, though that route costs time and fees that a timely filing avoids entirely.

How Has Double Taxation Relief Evolved in India?

Relief from double taxation is older than liberalisation, but its machinery is recent. Before 1991, India taxed in a largely closed economy: Section 91 offered unilateral relief from the start of the 1961 Act, the treaty network was thin, and claims were argued file-by-file before assessing officers with no standard form, no fixed conversion rate, and outcomes that varied with the officer.

Liberalisation globalised Indian income and forced the system to standardise. The treaty network grew past 90 agreements, Section 90A extended relief to specified association agreements in 2006, and the decisive step came in 2017, when Rule 128 codified foreign tax credit and introduced Form 67 as its mandatory statement from AY 2017-18. The CBDT's 2022 amendment then relaxed the deadline to the end of the assessment year, and the whole workflow moved onto the e-filing portal at incometax.gov.in. The Income-tax Act, 2025 completes the arc, carrying the same credit into Form 44 from Tax Year 2026-27 with sharper verification for larger claims. Six decades of practice have converged on one discipline: document the foreign tax, file the statement first, and the relief follows.

Frequently Asked Questions About Form 67