I write when something is clear enough in my head to be useful to someone else. Topics range from international tax and business to AI, automation, and building things that outlast your attention.
```html Every year, as November rolls around, my NRI clients start getting anxious. The calendar is ticking, and they're wondering if there's anything they should be doing before the financial year ends. I've been through…
```html Five years ago, I charged by the hour. ₹3,000 per hour, ₹5,000 per hour — whatever the market could bear. It felt professional. It felt like I…
There is one conversation I have with founders entering India that is harder than any technical discussion about structure, tax or compliance. It is the conversation about control.…
My practice went fully remote and stayed that way. No office that clients visit, no physical file room, no fixed desk where the work happens. Here is what…
Small founders ask me what accounting software to use, and they expect me to recommend whatever is most convenient for my own office. I do not, because the…
This is the advice foreign clients push back on most, and I keep giving it: start the India registration before you feel ready. Not before you have a…
Professional fees in India are usually discussed in private and quoted without explanation. I am going to do the opposite and set out how I actually price cross-border…
There is one mistake I see NRI clients make every single quarter, and it is not exotic. It is the assumption that tax deducted at source is the…
Most Indian founders have a CA firm. Fewer have a CA. The distinction sounds like semantics until the moment it matters, which is usually a moment that arrives…
For the first several years of my practice I took almost every client who came to me. That was the right decision then and it would be the…
A year ago I started running parts of my CA practice on AI in earnest — not experimenting with it, actually depending on it for work that goes…
Foreign investors read Indian shareholder agreements carefully. They negotiate valuation, board seats, reserved matters and exit rights. And then a clause they skimmed — because it looked like…
Cross-border consulting arrangements create permanent establishment risk more often than any other structure I work with, and almost always by accident. The fee itself is rarely the problem.…
Clients ask what a late ROC filing costs and expect a number. The number is the easy part, and it is rarely what actually hurts. The direct cost…
This question comes up in almost every India entry call, usually phrased hopefully: "we're small, so we probably don't need an audit yet, right?" The answer for a…
There is a conversation about treaty relief that founders with cross-border operations consistently avoid, and it is not the one about rates. It is the one about whether…
Of everything I tell NRI clients, the advice that gets ignored most often is the simplest: check your Indian tax residency every single year. Not once when you…
When people think of India's international business hubs, they immediately picture Mumbai, Delhi, or Bangalore. But here's what I've observed in my fifteen years as a CA working…
When a business asks me what cross-border tax will cost them, they are usually asking about my fee. That is almost never the expensive number. The expensive numbers…
Every foreign company that sets up in India gets a compliance calendar eventually. Usually it arrives after the first missed deadline, assembled in a hurry by whoever is…
My practice runs on WhatsApp. Not partly. Not as a convenience layer on top of email. Clients message me on WhatsApp, send documents on WhatsApp, approve filings on…
Every business owner or promoter has a set of government portals and platforms they must access regularly — or at least have credentials ready when their CA asks.…
```html Sixty-four years. That's how long the Income Tax Act, 1961 has governed taxation in India. And now, after nearly seven decades, we're getting a complete rewrite. As…
I have set up more India subsidiaries for foreign parents than I can count, and the conversation almost always starts the same way: someone has been quoted a…
DTAA stands for Double Taxation Avoidance Agreement. India has these agreements with over 90 countries. They exist to ensure that the same income is not taxed twice —…
Transfer pricing sounds like something that only matters for multinationals with dedicated tax departments and armies of advisors. The reality is that it kicks in the moment you…
One of the more interesting intellectual problems in owning small businesses is figuring out what they're actually worth. Not for any immediate transactional reason — I'm not selling…
I work with NRIs fairly regularly. Not as the primary focus of my practice — cross-border corporate tax is the main work — but NRI tax planning comes…
Every business I run has WhatsApp as the primary contact channel. Not email. Not a contact form. Not a booking system. WhatsApp. This was a deliberate choice, not…
I had a WordPress website for my CA practice that looked like it was built in 2014 — because it was. It worked. Clients could find me. But…
Every few months I speak with an Indian founder who has incorporated in Delaware, opened a Stripe account, and is now confused about why their CA back home…
Most business owners pick their structure once — usually at the start, usually without much thought — and then never revisit it. A friend suggested a private limited…
People ask me this fairly often. How does a CA who handles international tax for clients also run a farmhouse rental, manage a paying-guest property, and still have…