Emigrating Residents and Returning NRIs – Part-II

This article is part of the ongoing series of articles dealing with Income-tax and FEMA issues related to NRIs. This is the second part of the two-part article on the interplay of Income-tax and FEMA issues for Emigrating Residents and Returning NRIs. Part-I of this article was published in the June 2024 edition of the BCAS Journal. It dealt with concepts and controversies related to migrating residents and change of citizenship. One can refer to Paragraphs 1 to 4 at the start of Part-I for introductory points in relation to movement from one country to another. Part-II — this part — is in continuation to Part-I and covers issues related to Returning NRIs. At the end of this article certain considerations which are common to both sets of people — migrating residents and returning NRIs — are also dealt with in Para C.

B. Returning NRIs

A recent survey highlights that at least 60 per cent of NRIs in the US, UK, Canada, Australia, and Singapore are considering returning to India after retirement¹ . Apart from retirement, there are several other reasons due to which NRIs return to settle back in India — to stay with family members in India; due to their or their family members’ health reasons; citizenship issues in the foreign country; political instability in the foreign country; etc. In our experience, some of them are also returning