Short answer: a chartered accountant's certificate is not required on every remittance. Under the renamed forms — Form 15CA is now Form 145, and Form 15CB is now Form 146 from 1 April 2026 — the certificate is needed on one part of four: where the sum is chargeable to tax in India and exceeds ₹5 lakh in the tax year. Everything else is a self-declaration.
Banks rarely put it that way. The usual message is that nothing moves until a CA has signed something, and for a great many remittances that is simply not what the rule says.
They work as a pair, and the distinction is the whole point:
- Form 145 (formerly 15CA) — your declaration, as the person remitting.
- Form 146 (formerly 15CB) — a chartered accountant's certificate on the nature of the payment and its taxability.
The renaming took effect for remittances initiated on or after 1 April 2026, under the Income-tax Act 2025. The substance did not change. What changed is that most of the guidance you will find online — and some of the paperwork at the branch — still uses only the old numbers.
| Part | When it applies | Form 146 needed? |
|---|
| A | Remittance ₹5 lakh or less in the tax year | No |
| B | You hold an Assessing Officer's certificate under Section 195(2), 195(3) or Section 197 | No |
| C | Above ₹5 lakh and chargeable to tax | Yes |
| D | Not chargeable to tax, whatever the amount | No |
Two conditions have to be satisfied together before a certificate arises: the sum must be taxable, and it must be above the threshold. Fail either and you are in Part A, B or D.
The ₹5 lakh limit is an annual aggregate, not a per-transfer figure. Splitting one large remittance into several smaller ones does not keep you underneath it.
There is a specified list of categories that require no filing at all, whatever the amount — among them personal travel, education abroad, maintenance of close relatives, medical treatment, and imports of goods. If your remittance falls within that list, neither Form 145 nor Form 146 arises.
The list moved with the rest of the machinery. What was Rule 37BB of the 1962 Rules is Rule 220 of the Income-tax Rules 2026, under an identical heading. If you are checking a remittance against guidance that still cites 37BB, the substance is likely still sound — it is the number that is stale.
That is worth checking first, because it disposes of a large share of ordinary family remittances before any question of a certificate comes up.
The most common case, and the one where the misconception costs most.
Where the funds are your own after-tax money — a balance on which TDS has already been deducted, or income already offered to tax in an earlier year — the remittance is generally not chargeable to tax a second time. That points to Part D: a self-declaration, no certificate, whatever the amount.
The qualification matters, though. "My own money" is doing a lot of work in that sentence. Sale proceeds of a property, accumulated rent, and a maturing deposit are three different things with three different tax histories, and the bank will ask which it is. Where the character of the funds is genuinely mixed, or where the tax position of an earlier year was never settled, Part C and a certificate is the honest answer rather than the inconvenient one. If the underlying asset was never disclosed in a year you were resident, deal with that first — FAST-DS 2026 closes on 31 December, and repatriating ahead of it does not make the earlier omission go away.
Tax reporting is one gate. FEMA is the other, and people conflate them.
From an NRO account, up to USD 1 million per financial year may be repatriated for income that is non-current in nature — proceeds of an asset sale, most obviously. Income that is current in nature — rent, dividends, pension, salary — is repatriable without that cap.
The limit resets each financial year. If you are repatriating a large property sale, that reset is worth planning around rather than discovering in March.
This is the sequence that causes the most difficulty, because two separate things have to go right and they happen in a fixed order.
When an NRI sells property in India, the buyer must deduct TDS on the whole sale value, not on the gain — which is why a Section 197 lower-deduction certificate, obtained before the sale, is usually the single most valuable step available. That is set out in NRI property sale TDS.
Getting the money out afterwards is this article's subject. Note the connection: if you obtained a Section 197 certificate for the sale, the remittance falls in Part B — the officer has already determined the position, and no Form 146 arises. Doing the first step properly simplifies the second.
- What the money actually is — sale proceeds, rent, dividend, salary, a maturing deposit, or a mix.
- Whether it is chargeable to tax in India in your hands, now.
- Your aggregate remittance for the tax year so far, against the ₹5 lakh line.
- Whether you hold an Assessing Officer's certificate under Section 195(2), 195(3) or Section 197.
- Whether the category is on the specified exempt list at all.
Those five answers determine your part, and the part determines whether a certificate is needed. Going to the branch without them is how a Part D self-declaration turns into a fortnight of correspondence.
Withholding on payments to non-residents moved from Section 195 of the 1961 Act to Section 393(2) of the Income-tax Act 2025. The reporting obligation behind these forms rests with the payer — which is why the bank, not you, is the one refusing to move until it is satisfied, and why arguing with the branch about your own tax position rarely works. Giving them the right part, correctly supported, does.
For how residency itself is determined, and what changed in the NRI chapter under the 2025 Act, see NRI taxation under the Income-tax Act 2025.
This is a working reference, not the statute. Thresholds and form numbering have both moved recently — confirm the current position before relying on it.