Published 9 August 2026 · v1.0.0 · Income Tax Department DTAA database, updated 30 July 2026 · PIB, Ministry of Commerce & Industry, 6 March 2026

The tax-treaty network: 97 countries, decades deep

Nearly every major trading and investment partner already has one.

A Double Taxation Avoidance Agreement determines which of two countries taxes a given stream of income — or how the tax paid in one is credited against the liability in the other — when a person or company earns money across both. India's network, tracked on the Income Tax Department's own live database (last updated 30 July 2026), currently lists 97 countries with a comprehensive agreement in force, out of 173 total DTAA-related instruments on record once limited agreements, Tax Information Exchange Agreements (TIEAs), amending protocols and MLI-updated “synthesised texts” are counted separately. The gap between 173 and 97 is not a discrepancy: many countries appear more than once in the raw count because a comprehensive agreement, its synthesised text (reflecting Multilateral Instrument changes), and later amending protocols are each logged as separate entries for the same treaty relationship.

The network is still actively maintained, not a fixed historical list. Notifications issued in the twelve months to this article's research include a protocol amending the India–Brazil DTAA (30 March 2026), enforcement of a fresh MoU under the India–Japan DTAA (2 April 2026), a protocol amending the India–Belgium agreement (10 November 2025), an entirely new India–Qatar DTAA (24 October 2025), and a protocol amending the India–Oman agreement (25 June 2025). Tax treaties, unlike trade treaties, tend to get renegotiated quietly and often — updating a withholding-tax rate or an information-exchange clause doesn't require the years of tariff-line negotiation a trade agreement does.

The trade-treaty network: a much smaller, much newer club

A SAARC-and-ASEAN-era base, plus a four-year sprint of new deals.

Free Trade Agreements are a different instrument entirely — they set tariff and market-access terms for goods and services, not tax jurisdiction. India's FTA network split into two distinct eras. Ten agreements pre-date the current wave: the India–Bhutan trade and transit agreement (1972, revised 2006), the Indo–Nepal Treaty of Trade (1991, revised 2009), the India–Sri Lanka FTA (2000), the South Asian Free Trade Area covering eight SAARC members including Afghanistan (2006), the India–Thailand Early Harvest Scheme (2004), the India–Singapore CECA (2005) — India's first comprehensive FTA with any country — the India–South Korea CEPA (2010), the ASEAN–India Trade in Goods Agreement phased in across ten ASEAN members (2010–2011), the India–Japan CEPA (2011) and the India–Malaysia CECA (2011).

According to the Ministry of Commerce & Industry's own account, published via PIB on 6 March 2026, a second and more recent wave has since pushed the network to “Nine FTAs spanning 38 countries”: starting with India–Mauritius CECPA in 2021, followed by the India–UAE CEPA (in force May 2022), the India–Australia ECTA (implemented December 2022), the India–EFTA TEPA (signed 10 March 2024, entered into force 1 October 2025), the India–UK CETA (signed July 2025), the India–Oman CEPA (December 2025), the India–New Zealand FTA (announced 22 December 2025), and the India–EU FTA (27 January 2026). A framework for an interim agreement with the United States followed on 7 February 2026, though the release does not describe this as a concluded FTA. That enumeration names eight concluded agreements against the release's own headline count of nine — this article could not identify the ninth from the release text itself, and treats the US framework as explicitly excluded per the release's own wording rather than guessing it fills the gap.

Alongside FTAs, India also maintains a smaller set of Preferential Trade Agreements (PTAs) — narrower arrangements offering tariff concessions on a limited list of goods rather than comprehensive market access. These include the Asia Pacific Trade Agreement (APTA, 1976, later joined by Bangladesh, China, Laos, South Korea, Sri Lanka and Mongolia), the Global System of Trade Preferences among developing countries (GSTP, 1989, 46 members though India exchanges concessions with only 12 of them), the India–Afghanistan PTA (2003), the India–MERCOSUR PTA (2009, tariff concessions on 450+ tariff lines each way) and the India–Chile PTA (2007). These sit below FTA-level ambition and are not counted in the government's “nine FTA” total.

Sources. DTAA comprehensive-agreement count (97), total instrument count (173) and the sample country list — Income Tax Department (CBDT, Ministry of Finance), live DTAA database at incometaxindia.gov.in/dtaa, filtered by DTAA Type = “Comprehensive Agreements,” page last reviewed and updated 30 July 2026, read directly. Recent DTAA notifications (Brazil, Japan, Belgium, Qatar, Oman) — incometaxindia.gov.in/double-taxation-avoidance-agreements notification log, read directly, dated as cited in text. Pre-2021 FTA/PTA list, signing and implementation dates — DGFT, Appendix 2A, “List of Free Trade Agreements (FTAs)/Preferential Trade Agreements (PTAs) signed by India,” content.dgft.gov.in, read directly. Post-2021 FTA wave (“Nine FTAs spanning 38 countries”), UAE/Australia/EFTA/UK/Oman/New Zealand/EU dates and the US interim-framework date — Ministry of Commerce & Industry, PIB release ID 2236134, “India's achievements in Free Trade Agreements for the year 2025-26,” 6 March 2026, read directly; this article could not retrieve the release's own linked detail PDF (returned a 404 at the time of research) and relies on the press release text itself.

About this article: Researched, written and edited by Umashankar Triplicane Dwarakanathan, with AI research assistance; every figure is meant to trace to the primary source cited. See the Editorial Policy for how sourcing, AI use and corrections work.