Filing an income tax return from abroad: the complete NRI guide

Who has to file

Being an NRI doesn’t excuse you from filing. You must file an Indian return for the tax year if your total Indian income, before deductions, is above the basic exemption limit, if ₹25,000 or more of tax was deducted or collected from you in the year, or if you want to carry forward a loss from selling shares or property 2025 Act s. 263(1)was s. 139(1). A few other conditions, such as large bank deposits, also make a return compulsory. As a non-resident, only income that arises in India or is received here counts: rent from a flat in Pune, interest on an NRO deposit, a gain on Indian shares or property, a salary for work done in India. Your salary abroad and your foreign bank interest stay outside the return.

The rule that catches most NRIs isn’t the must-file one. It’s that tax is almost always deducted at source, at flat non-resident rates, before the money reaches you. A bank deducts 30% plus cess on NRO interest; a tenant deducts 30% plus surcharge and cess on rent; a buyer usually deducts on the whole sale price of a flat. None of them knows your deductions or your real rate. Filing is how you get the difference back, so it pays to file even in a year you don’t have to.

There’s a narrow exemption for a non-resident Indian whose only Indian income is investment income from assets bought in foreign exchange, or long-term gains on selling those same assets, or both, with the full TDS taken 2025 Act s. 216was s. 115G. NRE interest is tax-free, so it never makes you file on its own. Most readers, though, have rent or NRO interest, so the exemption doesn’t reach them. Read our guide to every case where an NRI must file, and the cases where filing gets you money back.

For a quick answer on your own year, use the ITR filing checker.

Your residency status comes first

Before anything else, the return asks for your residential status for the year, and the answer decides what goes in it. As a non-resident, you report Indian income only. As a resident and ordinarily resident, you report your worldwide income and your foreign assets. RNOR sits in between, with foreign income mostly left out. The tests are about days in India, and they’re applied afresh each tax year 2025 Act s. 6was s. 6.

Most people who live abroad are comfortably non-resident. The years to be careful with are the year you leave, the year you come back, and any year with a long stay in India or a large Indian gain. If you’re anywhere near 182 days, or you’re coming home, run the residency checker before you file.

As a non-resident, the current return forms also ask for your country of residence, your tax identification number there, and how many days you spent in India. Take the day counts from your passport stamps or travel record, not memory. The residency pillar explains how your residency status is worked out, including the higher-income visitor rule and deemed residency.

Which ITR form

There’s no separate return for NRIs. You use the same forms as residents, and which one depends on the kinds of income you have. A non-resident can’t use the simplest form, which is only for residents. Most NRIs with rent, interest or capital gains, and no business income, use ITR-2. If you run a business or practise a profession in India, a different form applies.

The new regime applies unless you choose the old one in your return. Our old vs new regime calculator shows which costs you less.

The Income-tax Rules, 2026 already set the forms for tax year 2026-27, and they keep the old names. The department publishes the filing utilities for each year before filing opens, so the forms you may have used this year, for income up to March 2026, are still under the old Act.

Using the wrong form isn’t fatal, but the department can treat the return as defective and give you a short window to fix it. Choosing the right one first time saves a round of correspondence. Read the full guide to choosing your ITR form, including the Schedule FA question for RNORs.

Filing step by step from abroad

You can do the whole return from where you live. You need a PAN, an email address, the login you set up once, and ideally an Indian bank account for the refund. The six steps below are the same every year.

Have these to hand before you start:

• your PAN, and the login for the e-filing portal;
• the TDS certificates from your tenant, bank or buyer, and the interest certificate for each NRO deposit;
• the rent you received, month by month, and receipts for municipal tax you paid;
• the sale deed, purchase deed and cost records for anything you sold;
• your passport or travel record, for the days you spent in India;
• if you’re claiming a treaty rate, your tax residency certificate for the year and your foreign tax identification number;
• the details of an Indian bank account in your name, for the refund.

Register once. The e-filing portal accepts a foreign mobile number; if you don’t have an Indian one, every one-time password comes to your email instead. You don’t need Aadhaar to register. Add your NRO account under your profile and ask the portal to validate it. It takes a couple of weeks, so do it well before you file.

Check your annual statement. Form 168 lists the TDS deducted against your PAN, and the annual information statement next to it lists the interest, rent, sales and other transactions reported to the department. Tick off every TDS entry against the certificates your tenant, bank or buyer gave you. If a deduction is missing, the payer hasn’t filed their TDS statement or used the wrong PAN, and you can’t claim it until they fix it.

Fill in the return. The portal pre-fills much of it from the annual statement: your interest, the TDS, sometimes the rent. Check every pre-filled figure, add what’s missing, and claim your deductions. If a tax treaty cuts India’s rate on your interest or dividends, claim it with a tax residency certificate from your country and Form 41 (was Form 10F), filed on the portal before the return 2025 Act s. 159was s. 90.

Pay anything owed first. If the return shows tax due after TDS, pay it online as self-assessment tax before you submit. Indian net banking is the easy route, and some banks let you pay from an NRO account. Then submit the return and e-verify it the same day if you can.

E-verifying without an Indian mobile number

A return you’ve submitted but not verified doesn’t count. You have 30 days from filing to e-verify it, or to get the signed acknowledgement to the department’s processing centre. Verify later and the date you verify becomes the return’s filing date, so it counts as late if that’s after the due date. A return that’s never verified is invalid.

The Aadhaar one-time password is the method most residents use, and the one most NRIs can’t, because it needs an Indian mobile linked to Aadhaar. You have four other routes:

• Net banking. Log in to your Indian bank’s net banking and choose e-verify from there. Most NRO accounts come with it.
• A code through your bank account. Once your bank account is validated on the portal and enabled for verification codes, the portal sends a code to the email and mobile your bank holds.
• A digital signature certificate. Useful if you already have one, for example as a company director. Registering it is a one-off.
• By post. Download the acknowledgement, ITR-V, sign it and send it by ordinary or speed post to the Centralized Processing Centre in Bengaluru. It must arrive within the time limit, so send it tracked and early.

If you do miss the limit, verify anyway, or ask on the portal for the delay to be condoned. Give your reason; it’s decided case by case. Read the full guide to e-verifying from abroad, including which methods actually work without an Indian mobile number.

Deadlines and filing late

For tax year 2026-27, the due date for an individual with no business income and no audit is 31 July 2027, the same for NRIs as for residents. The department sometimes extends it, but plan on the statutory date. The timeline shows the rest of the year.

Late (belated) return. Miss the due date and you can still file until 31 December 2027 2025 Act s. 263(4)was s. 139(4), or until the assessment is completed if that’s earlier. If you had to file, you’ll pay a late-filing fee of ₹5,000, or ₹1,000 if your total income is up to ₹5 lakh (₹5,00,000) 2025 Act s. 428was s. 234F, and interest at 1% a month on any tax you still owe 2025 Act s. 423was s. 234A. A late return also loses the right to carry forward most losses.

Revised return. Found a mistake in a return you filed? You can revise it until 31 March 2028 2025 Act s. 263(5)was s. 139(5). Since the Finance Act, 2026, the window runs past the belated date, but a revision filed after 31 December 2027 carries the same fee as a late return. You can revise more than once; the last one counts.

Updated return. An updated return lets you add income you left out, at any point up to 31 March 2032 2025 Act s. 263(6)was s. 139(8A). It costs extra tax of 25% of the tax and interest in the first year, rising to 70% in the last. It can’t reduce your tax or claim or increase a refund, so it’s no use for recovering over-deducted TDS. That’s why the belated date matters most to NRIs: it’s the last ordinary chance to claim a refund.

Getting your refund

For most NRIs, the refund is the point of filing. Once you’ve e-verified, the Centralized Processing Centre processes the return 2025 Act s. 270(1)was s. 143(1), works out your tax, sets the TDS against it and pays back the rest. You’ll get an intimation by email showing their figures next to yours.

The refund goes only to a bank account you’ve pre-validated on the portal, in your name and linked to your PAN. The portal’s list of accounts it can validate names the NRO account; an NRE account isn’t on it. The return does let a non-resident with no Indian account give a foreign account’s details, but a foreign account can’t be validated, so in practice keep an NRO account open for refunds.

The department adds interest at 0.5% a month 2025 Act s. 437was s. 244A. When you file by the due date, a TDS refund earns interest from the start of the following April, so filing early doesn’t earn more but filing late earns less. If you owe tax for an earlier year, the department can set the refund against it after telling you.

Refunds that don’t arrive are usually held up by an account that failed validation, a PAN–bank mismatch, or a TDS credit that doesn’t match the annual statement. Read the guide to claiming back TDS on NRO interest for the most common case.

Notices, and replying from abroad

Most NRIs who hear from the department get the processing intimation and nothing else. It’s not a demand unless it says so: check whether their figures match yours, and if they don’t, whether they missed a TDS credit or disallowed a claim.

Other notices come by email and sit in the e-proceedings tab on the portal, where you reply online with documents attached. Nothing requires you to be in India. The common ones for NRIs are a defective-return notice (the wrong form, or a schedule left out), a proposed adjustment where the return doesn’t match the annual statement, and questions about a high-value transaction such as a property sale you didn’t report.

Keep the email address on your portal profile current and check it, because deadlines to reply are short and run from the date the notice was issued, not when you read it. If you can’t deal with a notice yourself, you can authorise a chartered accountant or a relative in India to act for you on the portal.

Old or new tax regime

The new regime is the default for tax year 2026-27. It has lower slab rates but almost no deductions. The old regime keeps deductions such as investments in qualifying schemes and home-loan interest on a self-occupied home, at higher rates. Without a business, you choose in each year’s return, and only a return filed by the due date can choose the old regime.

For most NRIs the new regime wins. A typical NRI’s Indian income is rent and interest, with few of the deductions the old regime offers, and several of those deductions are for residents only. The calculation changes if you’re still paying a home loan on a flat you live in when you visit, or you invest heavily in Indian tax-saving schemes.

Two points are specific to NRIs. The rebate that wipes out tax on lower incomes is for residents only, so an NRI with modest Indian income can owe tax that a resident on the same income wouldn’t. And some income, such as certain interest and gains on investments bought with foreign exchange, can be taxed at special NRI rates outside the slabs.

Advance tax

Advance tax is paying your tax during the year instead of at the end. You have to pay it if the tax you’ll owe for the year, after TDS, is ₹10,000 or more 2025 Act s. 404was s. 208. It’s due in four instalments, from 15 June 2026 to 15 March 2027 2025 Act s. 408was s. 211.

Most NRIs never pay any, because the flat-rate TDS on rent and interest already covers their tax, and often more. It matters when income arrives without enough TDS: rent from a tenant who didn’t deduct, a gain on shares sold through a broker who didn’t deduct, or a large gain the buyer deducted too little on. If you miss an instalment you owe, interest runs on the shortfall until you pay.

A gain from a one-off sale can be paid in the instalments that fall after the sale, without interest for the earlier ones.

PAN for NRIs

You need a Permanent Account Number to file, and your tenant, bank and buyer need it too 2025 Act s. 262was s. 139A. Without one, you can’t file, so TDS can’t be claimed back, and payers deduct at a higher rate 2025 Act s. 397(2)was s. 206AA unless you give them your contact details, overseas address, tax residency certificate and foreign tax ID instead. You can apply from abroad online with a foreign address and have the card posted to you.

If you had a PAN before you left India, keep it: you can’t hold two. Update your status on it to non-resident and change your address and contact details, so notices reach you and your record doesn’t expect a resident’s paperwork. Non-residents aren’t required to link PAN with Aadhaar, but a PAN still marked as resident and unlinked can be treated as inoperative, which stops refunds and raises TDS until it’s fixed.

Declaring foreign income and assets

As a non-resident, your foreign income stays out of the Indian return. Your salary abroad, your foreign bank interest, and gains on foreign shares aren’t taxable in India and don’t belong in the return, even if you send the money home. Adding them by mistake can cost you tax you don’t owe.

That changes when you become resident. A resident and ordinarily resident taxpayer reports worldwide income and claims credit for tax paid abroad, using Form 44 (was Form 67), under the treaty or, where there’s none, 2025 Act s. 160was s. 91. They must also list foreign assets: bank accounts, shares, retirement accounts and property abroad, even if they earned nothing, and have to file for that reason alone. As an RNOR taxpayer you’re resident, but your foreign income generally stays out and the foreign-asset schedule doesn’t apply.

Tax treaties work differently for NRIs. You don’t claim foreign tax credit in India; you claim the treaty’s lower rate on Indian income, and your country of residence gives the credit for Indian tax. Read how treaty relief works for NRIs.