Schedule FA vs Schedule FSI — assets versus income

The single most consequential difference is the period. Schedule FA runs on the calendar year — everything held between 1 January and 31 December — while Schedule FSI, like the rest of your ITR, runs on the financial year, 1 April to 31 March. The same US dividend can therefore land in a different reporting window on each schedule. Filing Schedule FA on the April–March year is one of the most common Schedule FA errors, precisely because FSI trains you to think in financial years.

If you paid tax abroad on foreign income — US withholding on an RSU dividend, say — you can generally claim relief for it in India under the relevant Double Taxation Avoidance Agreement. That claim runs through Schedule FSI together with Schedule TR, and is ordinarily supported by Form 67 filed before the return. Schedule FA plays no part in that credit: it is the asset register, not an income or tax computation. A holding can appear in Schedule FA every year while producing income that touches Schedule FSI only in the years it pays out.

GetScheduleFA builds your Schedule FA from your Charles Schwab or Interactive Brokers statements — the Table A2 custodial-account row and one Table A3 row per purchase lot, each converted at the State Bank of India TT-buying rate for its own date. It does not prepare Schedule FSI, Schedule TR, Form 67 or the foreign tax credit — those are the income and DTAA-relief side of the return, which your chartered accountant handles. What we do give you feeds that work: the dividend working in the output records each foreign dividend and its US withholding with the date and statement line behind it, which is the same information an FSI/FTC claim starts from.

New to the asset side? Start with the full Schedule FA method.