Whether your foreign salary is taxable in India is not decided by your passport or your visa. It is decided by day counts — and since 2020 there are two extra tests that catch people who were comfortably non-resident for years.
Get this wrong and every other number in your return is wrong with it.
Everyone knows the 182-day rule. Fewer know that you are also resident if you spend 60 days or more in India this year and 365 days or more across the four preceding years. For an Indian citizen leaving for employment abroad, or a citizen or person of Indian origin visiting India, that 60 is relaxed to 182 — which is why short visits home are usually safe.
The Finance Act 2020 added a sting. For a visiting Indian citizen or PIO whose total income other than foreign-source income exceeds ₹15 lakh, the relaxed threshold is 120 days, not 182. Someone with substantial Indian rental or capital gains income who spends four months in India can therefore become resident while an identical person with smaller Indian income does not.
An Indian citizen with Indian income above ₹15 lakh who is not liable to tax in any other country by reason of domicile, residence or similar criteria is deemed resident in India — no matter how few days they spend here. This was aimed at “stateless” residents in zero-tax jurisdictions. Anyone genuinely tax resident elsewhere is outside it, which is why the tax residency certificate from your country of residence matters.
Resident but Not Ordinarily Resident is the middle tier, and it is where returning NRIs want to be. An RNOR is taxed on Indian income and on business income controlled from India — but not on foreign income. You qualify if you were non-resident in 9 of the 10 preceding years, or in India for 729 days or less across the 7 preceding years. Anyone caught by the 120-day rule or by s.6(1A) is also treated as RNOR rather than ordinarily resident.
The calculator does the arithmetic. TaxSphere — our free case-law library, 1,184 authorities and the Act in full — has the judgments, the circulars and the statutory text for the same provision.
