GIFT City IFSC Consultants

What has to be decided, applied for and signed before the first transaction.

• Framework selection: fund, finance company, GIC, ship leasing, TechFin

  Finance Company or Finance Unit for ship and aircraft leasing; Fund Management Entity categories for funds; IBU for banks; Global In-house Centre for captives; ancillary and TechFin frameworks for service providers, each with its own capital, fit-and-proper and reporting terms.

• SEZ Letter of Approval for the unit

  The Form F proposal, authorised operations drafted to match the IFSCA licence exactly, the developer's space and lease, and the bond-cum-legal undertaking, the SEZ side that a purely financial adviser often leaves for last.

• IFSCA registration / licence application

  Prepared to answer the regulator's questions before they are asked: business plan, ownership, key personnel, substance in the IFSC and the specific activities to be permitted.

• Ship-leasing and IBU-linked structures

  The leasing entity, its lease flows and its funding designed under the Finance Company framework so that the tax position under s.80LA and the FEMA treatment as a non-resident actually hold when a lessee is Indian.

• Tax and FEMA cross-links that decide the structure

  SNRR and other non-resident banking arrangements, GST on services to and from the unit, and the customs treatment of anything physical, settled with the International Trade and GST desks before the applications go in.

The obligations, records and clocks that keep the benefit from leaking back as a demand.

• IFSCA periodic returns and disclosures

  Framework-specific returns, key-personnel and ownership changes, capital adequacy where it applies, and circular-driven changes, GIFT City moves by circular, and units that read them late are the ones that get queried.

• SEZ APR and NFE for a financial unit

  Form I APR, NFE on services turnover, authorised-operations discipline and space and lease compliance with the developer, the part of GIFT compliance that financial teams most often discover after a query.

• FEMA and banking as a non-resident (SNRR)

  The unit's non-resident status under FEMA, its foreign-currency accounts, transactions with Indian residents and the reporting that follows, kept aligned with the IFSCA licence.

• s.80LA and other tax positions maintained

  The s.80LA claim and the conditions that support it, GST zero-rating on services received for authorised operations, and the treatment of services supplied into the DTA.

• Approvals for changes to the business

  Adding an activity, changing control, moving premises, each is a change to one or both approvals, sequenced so the unit is never operating outside either.

Notices, exits, investigations and appeals, argued by people who sat on the deciding side of the desk.

• IFSCA inspections and show-cause

  Responding to inspection findings and show-cause under the framework regulations, with the substance and governance record the regulator expects to see, and the appellate route mapped before the reply is sent.

• Licence surrender and SEZ exit, in the right order

  Winding down under the IFSCA framework, then exiting the SEZ unit under Rule 74, duty on depreciated capital goods and stock, Form L, NFE position, in an order that does not leave the unit licensed but unapproved, or the reverse.

• SEZ-side proceedings (DC, BoA)

  APR queries, NFE shortfall representations and any LoA cancellation are SEZ Rules matters before the DC and UAC, appealable to the Board of Approval in Form J within thirty days (Rules 55–56).

• Tax and FEMA challenges

  Where the s.80LA position or the non-resident FEMA treatment is questioned, the defence is the structuring record, which is why the record is built at set-up, not assembled at audit.

• Appeals to the Securities Appellate Tribunal

  Where the IFSCA Act provides an appeal from an IFSCA order, it lies to the Securities Appellate Tribunal within the period the Act prescribes, the appeal memorandum, the stay application and the record built at the inspection and show-cause stage decide how it goes.