The NRI Money Guide: how to move your money out of India
Sending money from India back to your life abroad is governed by a maze of FEMA rules, a USD 1-million ceiling, and two tax forms most NRIs have never heard of. Here is how the system actually works.
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Sooner or later, almost every overseas Indian faces the same question: there is money in India — a sold flat, an inheritance, rent piling up in a bank account — and it needs to get to where you actually live. The moving of it is called repatriation, and it is one of the systems that trips NRIs up most expensively, because the rules are specific, they are enforced, and they are not intuitive.
This is a journalist's map of how the system works, not financial advice. The rules change often; confirm your own position with your bank or a qualified chartered accountant before you move anything.
It starts with the account
Under India's Foreign Exchange Management Act (FEMA), what you can repatriate depends almost entirely on which account the money sits in.
Money in an NRE (Non-Resident External) or FCNR (Foreign Currency Non-Resident) account is freely and fully repatriable — principal and interest, no ceiling. These accounts are designed to hold foreign earnings, and the system lets that money flow back out without friction.
Money in an NRO (Non-Resident Ordinary) account is the hard case. This is where income earned in India lands — rent, dividends, interest, the proceeds of a property sale. From an NRO account, you may repatriate up to USD 1 million per financial year, and only after the tax has been paid and the paperwork filed.
The two forms nobody mentions
The paperwork is where people stall. To move funds out of an NRO account you generally need Form 15CA and Form 15CB. Form 15CB is a certificate from a chartered accountant confirming that the correct tax has been deducted on the money you are sending. Form 15CA is your own online declaration to the tax department, filed on the income-tax portal, that the tax has been handled. Banks will also ask for Form A2 and their own request form before they release the transfer.
It sounds bureaucratic because it is — but it is the mechanism that lets India tax the income before it leaves, and skipping a step is the most common reason a repatriation gets stuck.
The tax bite
The other surprise is tax. Income earned in India and held in an NRO account — that rent, those dividends, the capital gain on a flat — is taxed at applicable Indian rates, which for many NRIs lands around 30% before anything is repatriated. Whether you can claim some of that back depends on the Double Taxation Avoidance Agreement between India and your country of residence, which is exactly the kind of thing the chartered accountant who signs your 15CB exists to work out.
The shape of it
Reduced to its bones, the system is simple to state and easy to get wrong:
- Foreign money (NRE/FCNR): flows out freely.
- Indian income (NRO): up to USD 1 million a year, tax paid first, Forms 15CA and 15CB filed.
The diaspora's financial relationship with India is full of these one-way valves and annual ceilings, and they change with almost every Union Budget. The money is yours. Getting it home is a procedure — and the NRIs who treat it as one, and lean on a good accountant, are the ones who don't lose a slice of it to a missed form.
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