Practice Drills: Advising on a Simulated Family Office Tax Residency Case

A simulation course for advisers, family office principals and senior HNIs who already know the residency rules and now want to apply them to a messy, real-world file. You are handed the case of a fictional Indian business family spread across Bengaluru, Dubai, Singapore and London: a patriarch who still runs the operating company, a son relocating to the UAE, a daughter on a Singapore employment pass, a grandchild studying in the UK and a family investment company plus private trust sitting above them all. Working as the family office's tax adviser, you build the day-count ledger, fix each member's residential status under Indian law and FEMA, run treaty tie-breakers, test the plan against the principal purpose test and GAAR, map every income stream to its taxing country, compute foreign tax credit, complete foreign asset disclosures, re-paper bank accounts, check gifts and trust distributions to non-resident beneficiaries and test where the holding company is effectively managed. You finish by writing the residency advice memo and running a full case on a new family. All family figures are illustrative; the rules are real and stated as at the date of last review, under the Income-tax Act, 2025.