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

Royalty: 10% of the gross amount — Article 12 (Royalties), India–Zambia DTAA (as amended through 20 Aug 2026). Equipment-use royalties sit inside the royalty definition and take the same 10%. FTS: 10% — Article 14 (Management and consultancy 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 Notes: SUPERSEDED-TREATY TRAP (primary risk on this corridor): a new India-Zambia treaty was signed 11 April 2018 and is widely described in secondary databases as 'the India-Zambia treaty', but it has not entered into force. Positive evidence the 1981 Convention still governs: (a) CBDT's own 'Tax Rates - DTAA v. Income-tax Act' chart, stamped 'As amended by Finance Act, 2026', carries a Zambia dividend row reading '5%, if at least 25% of the shares of the company paying the dividend is held by a recipient company for a period of at least 6 months prior to the date of payment of the dividend; 15% in other cases' - a verbatim restatement of Art 10(2)(a) of the 1981 Convention, including the distinctive six-month holding period; (b) ZRA's official DTA rate table lists India as 'In force' with entry into force 18/01/1984; (c) India's OECD MLI position lists only the 1981 instrument. Any tool that silently upgrades to the 2018 text will mis-state the corridor.; ARTICLE-NUMBER TRAP: royalties are Art 12 but the FTS-analogue is Art 14, with Capital gains at Art 13 sitting between them. Any rule that assumes the FTS limb lives at Art 12(4), Art 12(2)(b), or Art 13 will mis-cite. Cite Art 14.; NAMING TRAP: the Art 14 limb is titled 'Management and consultancy fees', not 'Fees for technical services'. Multiple practitioner sources consequently list India-Zambia among treaties with 'no FTS article'. That is incorrect - the definition in Art 14(3) expressly covers services of a 'managerial, technical or consultancy nature', and both CBDT and ZRA publish a 10% technical-fee treaty rate for this pair.; NO MAKE-AVAILABLE GATE. Unlike India-US Art 12(4)(b) and India-UK Art 13(4)(c), Art 14 imposes no make-available/transfer-of-technology condition. Ordinary managerial and consultancy services with no technology transfer are taxable at source at 10% gross. This makes Zambia a more source-taxing corridor than the US/UK for identical services.; EQUIPMENT IS INSIDE THE ROYALTY DEFINITION, NOT A SEPARATE LANE. Art 12(3) sweeps in payments 'for the use of, or the right to use, industrial, commercial or scientific equipment' alongside copyright, patent, trade-mark, design, model, plan, secret formula or process, and industrial/commercial/scientific experience - all under the single 10% cap in Art 12(2). This is the opposite structure to India-US, where equipment carries its own 10% lane at Art 12(2)(b) against a 15% general rate. Here general and equipment coincide at 10%, so the distinction is rate-neutral but citation-relevant.; DRAFTING QUIRK in Art 14(2): 'such fees may be taxed in the Contracting State in which they arise' - the word 'also' is omitted, whereas the parallel Arts 10(2), 11(2) and 12(2) all read 'may also be taxed'. Read in context (and given the Art 14(1) 'may be taxed in that other State' allocation) this is a scrivener's slip, not an exclusive-taxation grant to the source State, but a literal reading is a live argument point.; NO BENEFICIAL-OWNERSHIP REQUIREMENT in Arts 10, 11, 12 or 14 (zero occurrences of 'beneficial owner' in the text), and NO Limitation of Benefits article. 1981-vintage drafting with no treaty-level anti-conduit guardrail, and - because Zambia is not an MLI party - no PPT overlay either. Domestic GAAR and s.90 are the only backstops.; Art 12(4) and Art 14(4) use the older PE carve-out formulation: the reduced rates fall away merely because the recipient 'has ... a permanent establishment with which' the right/property (Art 12) or the services (Art 14) are 'effectively connected'. There is no 'through which' requirement and no beneficial-owner framing, so the carve-out bites more readily than modern equivalents..