What is the India–Vietnam treaty withholding rate on royalties and fees for technical services?

Royalty: 10% of the gross amount — Article 12 (ROYALTIES), India–Vietnam DTAA (as amended through 20 Aug 2026). Equipment-use royalties sit inside the royalty definition and take the same 10%. FTS: 10% — Article 13 (TECHNICAL FEES). Gate: the treaty rate applies only through s.393(2) Sl. No. 17 → s.2(90)(c) with the s.159(8) TRC + Form 10F gate met; domestic comparator 20% + surcharge/cess (s.207(2)). Notes: SPLIT-ARTICLE TRAP (highest severity): royalties and technical fees sit in TWO separate articles - Art 12 'ROYALTIES' and Art 13 'TECHNICAL FEES' - not the combined Art 12/13 'Royalties and Fees for Technical Services' that most Indian treaties use. A pipeline that assumes one article, or that reads Art 13 as 'Capital Gains' by OECD-model analogy, will mis-key this corridor.; ARTICLE-NUMBERING SHIFT vs OECD Model: from Art 13 onward the numbering runs one ahead of the OECD MC. Here Art 13 = Technical Fees, Art 14 = Capital Gains, Art 15 = Independent Personal Services, Art 16 = Dependent Personal Services, Art 17 = Directors' Fees. Cross-references inside Art 12(4) and Art 13(4) accordingly point to 'Article 7 and Article 15' - Article 15 being IPS, not the OECD-model Art 14. Any citation mapped by OECD-model position rather than by this treaty's own numbering will be wrong.; TERMINOLOGY: the treaty says 'technical fees', not 'fees for technical services' (India-UK/Singapore usage) and not 'fees for included services' (India-US usage). Keyword search on the latter two phrases returns nothing.; NO MAKE-AVAILABLE: the Art 13(3) definition is a pure managerial/technical/consultancy test with no technology-transfer or enduring-benefit threshold - deliberately opposite to the India-US and India-UK calibration. No 'ancillary and subsidiary' limb either.; EQUIPMENT IS INSIDE THE ROYALTY DEFINITION, NOT A SEPARATE LANE: Art 12(3) folds 'the use of, or the right to use, industrial, commercial or scientific equipment' into 'royalties', and Art 12(2)'s single 10% cap applies to it identically. equipment_treatment is same_as_general, expressly NOT limb_absent and NOT separate_rate. Do not analogise to India-US Art 12(2)(b), which is a distinct lower lane sitting under a 15% general rate.; DRAFTING DEFECTS IN THE OFFICIAL INDIAN TEXT: Art 12(1) as published by CBDT reads 'Royalties in a Contracting State and paid to a resident of the other Contracting State' - the word 'arising' is omitted; and Art 12(3) reads 'any parent, trade mark' where 'patent' is plainly intended. These are transcription defects in the notified Annexure, not substantive limitations; Art 12(5) supplies the arising/source rule.; SOURCE RULE ASYMMETRY: Art 12(5) (royalties) deems arising by reference to a PE or a fixed base; Art 13(5) (technical fees) refers only to a permanent establishment and additionally captures 'a statutory body thereof' as payer. The two source rules are not mirror images and must be encoded separately.; NO SUPERSEDED-TREATY TRAP ON THIS CORRIDOR: the 1994 Agreement is the first and only India-Vietnam income-tax treaty; there is no earlier instrument and no India-USSR-style succession question. The trap here is the inverse - stale sources describing a pre-2017 EOI article, or sources that conflate the 2016 protocol with a rate-changing protocol..