How to register a company in the USA from India: The US filing takes days. The Indian paperwork around it is what decides whether you did it right.

This is the chapter most guides on this topic leave out, or wave at in a sentence. It's also where the paperwork lives for as long as you own the LLC. Everything runs through one bank, your designated AD bank (an Authorised Dealer Category I bank, in practice the branch that handles your foreign remittances).

Before the money goes: Form FC and the UIN

Under the 2022 regime the first investment is reported in Form FC. You fill it in, attach the LLC's documents, and give it to the AD bank "on or before making initial ODI". The bank enters it in RBI's online system and the LLC gets a UIN. RBI is clear that the UIN "does not constitute an approval"; it records your investment. What the bank does check is that the LLC is engaged in a bona fide business, so a one-page description of what the LLC sells, to whom, and how it gets paid is worth having ready.

After it goes: evidence of investment within six months

Once the capital lands, you have six months to give the AD bank proof that the LLC issued you its equity. For an LLC that's usually the operating agreement showing your capital contribution and 100% interest, with the US bank statement showing the money arriving. If the evidence doesn't reach the bank in time, the Master Direction says the funds "shall be repatriated" within the same six months.

Every year: the APR by 31 December

The Overseas Investment Regulations, 2022 require an Annual Performance Report for each foreign entity every year by 31 December. Where the LLC's year ends on 31 December, the APR for that year is due by 31 December of the following year. Only a holder of less than 10% without control, and with no commitment beyond that equity, is excused. A 100% owner is not.

Two details matter for a one-person LLC:

• Audited accounts. The Regulations base the APR on the LLC's audited financial statements. The relief for unaudited accounts, where the host country doesn't require an audit, is written for investors without control. US LLC law doesn't require an audit, but as the sole owner you have control, so plan with your CA for accounts that will satisfy the APR.
• A chartered accountant's certificate. RBI's Master Direction says the APR "shall be certified by a chartered accountant" where no statutory audit applies, "including in case of resident individuals".

What you can't do on this route

• Lend to your own LLC. The Master Direction says "a resident individual shall not make financial commitment by way of debt". Fund it as capital, not as a loan from you.
• Hang a subsidiary below it while you control it, as covered in chapter 1.
• Route money back into India through it without advice: Rule 19(3) limits structures where a foreign entity invests back into India, and that's a conversation for before, not after.

When something is late

Delays are fixable within limits. You file the late form with a Late Submission Fee through the AD bank: ₹7,500 per return for a late APR or other periodic report, and ₹7,500 plus 0.025% of the amount for each year of delay on a late Form FC or other flow reporting, capped at the amount involved. The option lasts three years from the due date; after that it's penal action under FEMA. Selling or closing the LLC later is reported within 30 days of receiving the proceeds.

Your ODI is paid for out of your Liberalised Remittance Scheme allowance. RBI's LRS Master Direction lets a resident individual send up to USD 250,000 per financial year (April to March), and Schedule III of the Overseas Investment Rules puts individual ODI inside that same ceiling. Everything else you send abroad under LRS in the year (a child's fees, travel, US shares) counts against it too.

On top of the limit sits tax collected at source. Since 1 April 2026 it's in section 394 of the Income-tax Act, 2025: on LRS remittances above ₹10 lakh in the year, the bank collects 20% for purposes other than education or medical treatment. Investing in your LLC is one of those other purposes.

TCS isn't a cost in the end. It's collected against your PAN, shows up in your annual tax statement, and counts as tax already paid when you file your return. What it does do is hold up cash for months, which hurts when the money was meant to pay a developer.

Say you send ₹15 lakh in your first year and nothing else under LRS. The first ₹10 lakh carries no TCS; the bank collects 20% of the next ₹5 lakh, which is ₹1,00,000. To land ₹15 lakh in the LLC's account you either send ₹16 lakh in total, or split the funding across two financial years.

The line repeated across this topic is "you only pay Indian tax if you bring the money home". For a resident that's wrong. Section 5 of the Income-tax Act, 2025 includes in a resident's income everything that "accrues or arises to such person outside India", whether or not it is ever received here. Only someone "not ordinarily resident" gets the narrower rule.

Are you resident?

Section 6 makes you resident in a tax year if you're in India for 182 days or more, or for 60 days in the year plus 365 days across the four years before. If you live and work in India, you're resident, and almost certainly ordinarily resident too.

The US sees through the LLC; India may not

For the IRS, a single-owner LLC is "disregarded": its profit is treated as yours. When the work is done from India, for clients anywhere, it isn't US business income, so the usual US federal income tax is $0 and only Form 5472 is filed. The US LLC guide shows where that changes (US staff, US work trips, US property).

India doesn't follow the US election. Your CA will decide which of two readings fits your facts:

POEM is the place of effective management: section 6(10) makes a foreign company resident in India if "key management and commercial decisions necessary for the conduct of business" are, in substance, made here. A founder who runs the LLC from a laptop in Bengaluru is exactly the fact pattern that test was written for.

Foreign tax credit under the India US treaty

If the LLC does pay US tax (because of US staff or US property, say), Article 25 of the India US tax treaty gives relief by credit, limited to the Indian tax on that income. You claim it in Form 44 (Form 67 for income up to 31 March 2026), filed with your return; the CBDT's Forms 44 and 45 FAQ maps the change. In the usual case the US tax is $0, so there's nothing to credit and India taxes the income in full under whichever reading applies.

Schedule FA: disclose it every year

As a resident you list foreign assets in Schedule FA of your return: your interest in the LLC, and any foreign account you hold or can sign on, including the LLC's US bank account. That rules out ITR-1 and ITR-4, which don't carry the schedule. Leaving it out can cost a ₹10 lakh penalty under section 43 of the Black Money Act; the section no longer applies where the assets left out, other than immovable property, total ₹20 lakh or less. Disclosure is due whatever the value.

If you do the work from India and invoice the LLC (or invoice foreign clients yourself), GST asks whether that's an export of services. Section 2(6) of the IGST Act sets five conditions, and all five have to hold:

• you, the supplier, are located in India;
• the recipient is located outside India;
• the place of supply is outside India;
• you're paid in convertible foreign exchange, or in rupees where RBI allows it;
• you and the recipient aren't merely establishments of one distinct person.

An export is zero-rated. A registered supplier can export services without paying IGST by filing a Letter of Undertaking in Form GST RFD-11 on the GST portal, for each financial year, before the first export of that year. The portal's LUT guide lists "providing services to a client in a country outside India" as the textbook case; it's closed only to anyone prosecuted for tax evasion of ₹2.5 crore or more.

The fifth condition and the second one are where an LLC you control from India needs a careful look: an LLC is its own legal person in the US, but where it is "located" for GST turns on its establishments, not its certificate. If the LLC has no presence in India, invoices to it usually line up with the conditions; your CA will want to see that.