Joint ownership is common among NRI families — spouses who bought a property together, siblings who inherited one jointly, a parent added to a title for convenience. A common assumption when that property is sold is that the gain, and the tax on it, splits evenly between the co-owners simply because there are multiple names on the document. That assumption isn't reliable, and getting it wrong can leave one co-owner over- or under-reporting their own share.
Gains follow the ownership share on record, not a default split
The capital gain, and the tax on it, is meant to be attributed to each co-owner in proportion to their actual documented share of ownership — as reflected on the title or sale deed, or established by the specific terms of an inheritance or gift — not automatically halved, or split evenly by head count, just because a property has multiple registered owners. A 70/30 registered share means a 70/30 split of the sale consideration, cost basis, and resulting gain between the two co-owners, with each reporting and being taxed on their own proportionate share. For jointly inherited property, this site's inherited-property explainer covers how the underlying cost and holding period carry forward from the original owner in the first place — a question that sits upstream of, and separate from, how the resulting gain then divides among the co-owners.
TDS is meant to be deducted co-owner by co-owner
Section 393(2) TDS is meant to be applied separately against each NRI co-owner's own share of the sale consideration, not once against the whole sale price as if there were a single seller. Where a sale involves a mix of resident and NRI co-owners, the correct approach described by tax-advisory sources is seller-wise: the resident co-owner's share is subject to the resident-seller TDS provision (typically the lower rate under Section 194-IA), while the NRI co-owner's share is subject to the higher Section 393(2) rate — each computed separately against that owner's own portion of the consideration, and deposited against that owner's own PAN.
Where this breaks down in practice
Buyers unfamiliar with mixed resident/NRI joint ownership sometimes default to withholding against a single PAN — often whichever co-owner is easiest to reach, or the resident co-owner — applying one rate to the entire sale price. That under-withholds relative to what Section 393(2) actually requires on the NRI co-owner's share, and leaves that co-owner's own Form 26AS without a matching TDS credit, which surfaces later as a reconciliation problem once each co-owner separately files a return and expects to claim their own credit against their own share of tax due. Getting a written breakdown of each co-owner's share, PAN, and residency status in front of the buyer and their bank before closing — not after — is the practical fix.
This same logic carries through to exemptions: each co-owner independently decides whether and how to claim Section 54 or 54EC against their own share of the gain, so one co-owner reinvesting doesn't automatically shield another co-owner's share (see this site's Section 54/54EC explainer). The Section 393(2) TDS estimator on the Real Estate Capital Gains page is built around a single seller's consideration and gain; for a joint sale, the practical approach is to run it once per co-owner, using that co-owner's own share of the price and cost basis rather than the sale's combined totals.