Residential status, FEMA accounts, DTAA claims, GST on exported services, and what happens to the income and assets you leave behind in India all shift the moment your life crosses a border — this is the work the practice is built around, alongside the full range of everyday CA services on the Services page.
The first question in any cross-border case — everything else follows from it.
Under the Income-tax Act, 2025, every individual falls into one of three categories: non-resident (NR), resident but not ordinarily resident (RNOR), or resident and ordinarily resident (ROR). Someone returning to India after years abroad usually qualifies for RNOR status — triggered by having been non-resident in 9 of the preceding 10 financial years, or having spent 729 days or fewer in India across the preceding 7 financial years. RNOR typically lasts 2–3 financial years, and during it, foreign-source income (other than income from an India-controlled business or profession) stays outside Indian tax entirely, and Schedule FA foreign-asset reporting isn't required. Getting the day-count right — and knowing exactly when the window closes — is usually the single highest-value piece of advice in a returning-NRI case. The RNOR Window tool below gives a first illustrative read on your own dates.
Your foreign accounts don't have to be forcibly converted — but they do need to be handled correctly.
Once you're resident in India, NRE and NRO accounts need reclassifying, but existing foreign-currency savings don't have to be converted to rupees — an RFC (Resident Foreign Currency) account lets you continue holding them in foreign currency as a resident. We review what's still open abroad — brokerage accounts, insurance, property, deferred compensation — and map out what needs closing, converting, or simply reporting once RNOR status lapses.
If a Double Taxation Avoidance Agreement applies, you shouldn't be paying tax twice on the same income.
Where income is taxed in both India and the country it came from, a treaty typically lets you claim a Foreign Tax Credit against your Indian tax liability, filed on Form 67 before the return itself. We handle the treaty-residency check, the credit computation, and the Tax Residency Certificate paperwork the other jurisdiction usually asks for. This is the usual mechanics for a client with US or Canadian income — both countries tax their residents, so a credit is genuinely there to claim.
The UAE works differently, and it's worth being precise about it: the UAE levies no personal income tax, so there is usually no foreign tax paid on UAE-source income for India to credit in the first place. The India-UAE DTAA still matters for a UAE-based client, but the question it answers is residency, not credit — the treaty's tie-breaker rules (permanent home, centre of vital interests, habitual abode) decide which country you're treated as resident of when your own facts are ambiguous, which in turn decides whether your worldwide income is taxable in India at all. Treating UAE income the same way as US or Canadian income for DTAA purposes is a common and avoidable mistake.
Billing a client abroad can be entirely GST-free — but the paperwork has to be exact.
Export of services — a foreign client, payment received in convertible foreign exchange through normal banking channels — is a zero-rated supply under GST. Below ₹20 lakh in annual receipts, registration isn't even required. Above it, registration plus an annual Letter of Undertaking (Form RFD-11, filed every April) lets you invoice without charging IGST at all. The GSTIN alone isn't enough on the invoice — it needs the LUT declaration wording and the LUT's own ARN and financial year, or the exemption doesn't hold up if it's ever questioned. E-way bills don't apply to services, and e-invoicing only becomes mandatory above ₹5 crore turnover.
Moving abroad doesn't end your compliance obligations on Indian-sourced income and assets — it usually complicates them.
A flat you still rent out, mutual funds you haven't redeemed, a fixed deposit that's still running — once you're a non-resident, the person paying you (a tenant, a buyer, a fund house) is usually required to deduct tax at source under section 195, at the higher NR rate, regardless of your actual tax liability. Two things routinely fix the gap between what gets withheld and what's actually owed: a lower or nil-TDS certificate under section 197 (Form 13), applied for before the payment, and a proper capital-gains computation at the time of sale so the withholding isn't simply accepted as the final tax. Repatriating the proceeds abroad then needs a Form 15CA — and above the threshold, a chartered accountant's Form 15CB — certifying the tax position before the bank will remit it.
Resident individuals funding education, investment, or family abroad run into the same rules from the opposite side.
Under the Liberalised Remittance Scheme, a resident individual can remit up to USD 250,000 a year abroad, declared on Form A2 with a stated purpose — education, maintenance of a relative, investment, gifting. Above ₹7 lakh in a financial year, the remitting bank collects tax at source (TCS) under section 206C(1G), at a rate that depends on the purpose — education funded by a loan is treated more lightly than an outright investment remittance. That TCS isn't a cost; it's a credit that needs to be claimed correctly against the final tax bill, and it only shows up right if the purpose code was accurate at the time of remittance.
Bring your travel history and a rough sense of your receipts — the first read usually takes one conversation.