How to Repatriate Money from India: Ceilings, Certificates, and the Order of Operations

Getting money into India has never been the hard part. There's no ceiling on inward remittances, every bank competes for them, and the paperwork is a SWIFT code. The return journey is what's regulated — and the regulation is not one rule but three layers stacked on top of each other. FEMA decides how much can leave and from which account. The Income-tax Act decides what proof of tax must travel with the money. And your bank decides which documents it wants to see before pressing send. Repatriation goes wrong when people tackle these layers in the wrong order. Taken in the right order, even a large remittance is a two-to-three-week exercise, most of it spent waiting on a chartered accountant and a branch.

Which door is your money behind?

Everything downstream depends on one classification: is the money sitting in an NRE or FCNR(B) account, or in an NRO account? The RBI's FAQ on non-resident accounts draws the line cleanly — NRE and FCNR(B) balances are freely repatriable, because that money entered India from abroad and the regulator regards it as yours to take back, principal and interest, without a ceiling. NRO balances hold India-sourced money — rent, dividends, sale proceeds, inheritances — and that money leaves through a metered gate. (If the three account types are new to you, start with our complete guide to NRE, NRO, and FCNR accounts; this article assumes the money is already parked and you want it out.)

Where the money sits	Ceiling on repatriation	Paperwork
NRE / FCNR(B)	None	Bank's own outward remittance form
NRO — current income (rent, dividend, pension, interest)	No monetary cap, once Indian tax is settled	CA certificate that tax is paid or provided for
NRO — capital (sale proceeds, deposits, inheritance)	USD 1 million per financial year	Form 15CA/15CB (now 145/146) plus source documents

If your money is in NRE, you can stop reading after this sentence: instruct your bank, sign its remittance form, and the transfer typically completes in a couple of days. Everything below is about the NRO gate.

The USD 1 million window, precisely

The RBI's Master Direction on Remittance of Assets, issued under the Foreign Exchange Management (Remittance of Assets) Regulations, 2016, lets NRIs and PIOs remit up to USD 1 million per financial year — April to March, per person, not per account — out of NRO balances or the sale proceeds of assets in India, including assets acquired by inheritance or legacy. At current exchange rates that's roughly ₹8.5 crore a year, which covers most people's needs most of the time; a couple holding assets jointly effectively has two windows, since the limit applies per remitter to their own funds. Anything beyond USD 1 million in a single year needs the RBI's prior approval, which is granted case by case and slowly — if a property sale will breach the ceiling, spanning the remittance across two financial years (part in March, part in April) is the legitimate, widely used answer.

The Master Direction attaches two strings worth quoting rather than paraphrasing: the remittances are "subject to payment of applicable taxes in India," and the bank must satisfy itself the funds are legitimate receivables — your banker will take an undertaking that the money isn't borrowed for the occasion or shuffled in from someone else's NRO account. Tax first, then FEMA, then the wire. That ordering is the whole game.

Current income doesn't count against the cap

Here's the relief valve that surprises people: current income is remittable without a monetary limit, outside the USD 1 million window entirely. The RBI's non-resident account FAQ states that current income "like rent, dividend, pension, interest etc." is even a permissible credit to your NRE account — the freely repatriable one — provided a chartered accountant certifies that applicable Indian tax has been paid or provided for. So a landlord collecting ₹30 lakh (about USD 35,000) a year in rent doesn't consume repatriation headroom at all: pay the tax, get the certificate, and either remit it abroad or sweep it into NRE. The cap is for capital — the corpus from a sale, a matured deposit, an inheritance — not for the income your Indian assets throw off each year.

The certificate ritual: 15CA and 15CB, now Forms 145 and 146

For two decades the tax leg of repatriation ran on two forms, and every NRI forum still speaks their names: Form 15CA, the remitter's own online declaration describing the payment and its taxability, and Form 15CB, a chartered accountant's certificate confirming the tax treatment and that whatever was due has been deducted or paid. With the Income-tax Act, 2025 taking effect this April, the pair has been renumbered: the Income Tax Department's portal now hosts Form 145 (replacing 15CA) and Form 146 (the CA certificate replacing 15CB), governed by Rule 220 of the Income-tax Rules, 2026. The architecture — parts, thresholds, exemption list — carried over intact, so the old intuition still works; your bank's relationship manager will likely use both names interchangeably for a while yet.

The structure matters because it decides whether you need a CA at all. The declaration has four parts: Part A for taxable remittances aggregating up to ₹5 lakh (about USD 5,800) to a recipient in the year — a self-declaration, no CA; Part B where an Assessing Officer has issued a nil or lower-deduction certificate; Part C — the common one — for taxable remittances above ₹5 lakh, which is where the CA certificate becomes mandatory; and Part D for remittances not chargeable to tax at all. The old Rule 37BB also carried a 33-item exempt list — imports, travel, education, and other specified payments needing no form whatsoever — and that list survives under the new rule.

Here's the nuance a good CA will walk you through: transferring your own already-taxed capital out of your own NRO account is arguably not a "sum chargeable to tax" at all — the tax event happened when the income arose, not when the money moves — which is what Part D exists for. In practice, nearly every bank demands the full CA certificate on NRO repatriations anyway, because the certificate shifts the risk of a wrong call from the bank's compliance desk to your accountant. Budget ₹5,000–15,000 for the certificate and expect the CA to ask for the paper trail behind the money: the sale deed, the TDS challans, the tax returns, the bank statements showing where each rupee came from.

Property sales carry two extra layers

Selling Indian property adds complications at both ends. At the front, your buyer must withhold tax under Section 195 — at capital-gains rates on the sale value, not the token 1% that applies to resident sellers — unless you obtain a lower-deduction certificate from the tax officer beforehand, which is almost always worth the effort on a large sale since the actual gain is usually far smaller than the price.

At the back end, where the proceeds can go depends on how the property was bought. Per the RBI's FAQ on immovable property, if you paid for it with foreign exchange — an inward remittance or NRE/FCNR(B) funds — the amount you originally brought in can be repatriated outside the USD 1 million cap, but "in the case of residential property, the repatriation of sale proceeds is restricted to not more than two such properties." The appreciation above your original foreign-currency investment, the proceeds of a third residential property, and any property bought with rupee funds or received by inheritance all travel through the USD 1 million window instead — with documentary evidence, which for inherited assets means the will or legal heir certificate alongside the usual tax paperwork. This is why the funding route matters so much at buying time — we walk through how it shapes a property purchase in India from the Gulf, where the exit door is chosen the day you pay.

What inheritance changes — and what it doesn't

India abolished estate duty in 1985, so inheriting Indian assets triggers no Indian tax on the inheritance itself — nothing due from the estate, nothing due from you on receipt. What inheritance changes is the paperwork, and here the paperwork is the product. The Master Direction explicitly brings assets acquired "by way of inheritance or legacy" inside the USD 1 million window, but no bank will certify a rupee of it until the chain of title is proven. Expect to assemble: the death certificate; the will, with probate where one was obtained, or a legal-heir or succession certificate where there was no will; and the documents showing the asset actually devolving to you — the depository's transmission letter for shares, the mutation entry for property, the bank's own claim-settlement letter for deposits. Build this file once, completely, and every subsequent remittance from the inheritance reuses it.

Two tax subtleties then follow the money. First, while the inheritance itself is tax-free, the income it produces from the day it becomes yours is not — rent from an inherited flat and interest on inherited deposits land in your NRO account and are taxed like any other Indian income of yours, TDS and all. Second, when you sell an inherited asset, your cost for capital-gains purposes steps back to what the previous owner paid, and their holding period counts as yours. A flat your father bought in 1998 and left you in 2024 is long-term the moment you inherit it — and for pre-2001 acquisitions the law offers real relief: Section 55 lets you substitute the property's fair market value as on 1 April 2001 for the original cost, often shrinking the taxable gain several-fold. Even so, under the current regime you're looking at tax at 12.5% (plus surcharge and cess) on what may still be a large gain. Budget for that, and for the lower-deduction certificate that stops the buyer withholding on the entire sale price.

A worked example: a ₹2 crore flat, week by week

Abstractions hide the sequencing, so here is a realistic run. You bought a Bengaluru flat in 2013 for ₹80 lakh; a buyer has agreed on ₹2 crore; you live abroad and want the proceeds out.

Weeks 1–6 — before anyone signs. This is the stage most sellers skip, expensively. Without intervention, your buyer must withhold under Section 195 at capital-gains rates on the full sale price — with surcharge and cess, roughly 15% of ₹2 crore, or nearly ₹30 lakh — even though your actual tax on the ₹1.2 crore gain works out to about ₹18 lakh. The fix is a lower-deduction certificate from the tax officer (the Form 13 application under Section 197, in the old numbering, filed online), which instructs the buyer to deduct only what you'll actually owe. The officer's processing takes anywhere from a few weeks to a couple of months, and your buyer needs a TAN to deduct at all — so start both the moment the price is agreed, not after registration.

Week 7 — the sale. The deed is registered; the buyer pays ₹2 crore less the certified TDS into your NRO account, deposits the deducted tax with the government by the 7th of the following month (30 April for March deductions), and reports it in the quarterly non-resident TDS return. Keep copies of the challans — your CA will want them before the tax portal shows the credit.

Weeks 8–9 — the chartered accountant. Your CA computes the capital gain from the purchase deed and sale deed, verifies the TDS challans against the liability, and issues the certificate — Form 146, the old 15CB — for ₹5,000–15,000. You then file Form 145 (old 15CA), Part C, on the income-tax portal and download the acknowledgment.

Week 10 — the bank. Form A2, the CA certificate, the 145 acknowledgment, the sale deed, your PAN, and the legitimate-receivables undertaking go to the branch's NRI desk. At around ₹85 to the dollar, ₹2 crore is roughly USD 235,000 — comfortably inside the annual window — and the SWIFT transfer lands in two to three days once compliance signs off.

Afterwards. You file an Indian return for the year to true up the tax — and if you skipped the certificate stage, this is where the excess ₹12 lakh sits until the refund arrives, months later, in rupees, in your NRO account, waiting to be repatriated all over again. You'll also claim credit for the Indian tax on your home-country return; the mechanics of that credit are the subject of our guide to how DTAA works for NRIs. Total elapsed time, done in the right order: about ten weeks, six of which were the certificate you applied for before signing anything.

The TCS tangle: a resident's problem, not yours

Somewhere in this process a well-meaning banker, or a search result, will raise tax collected at source on foreign remittances, and it's worth untangling because the confusion costs people real planning errors. TCS on outward remittances rides on the Liberalised Remittance Scheme — the USD 250,000-a-year route available to residents. As of mid-2026, resident remittances under LRS above an annual threshold of ₹10 lakh attract TCS at rates that reach 20% for general purposes, with carve-outs for education and medical remittances (check the current schedule before relying on a number — this is the corner of the law that Budgets keep adjusting).

None of that applies to you, because an NRI repatriating from an NRO account isn't using LRS at all — you're using the USD 1 million remittance-of-assets route, a different lane with different paperwork and no TCS. If a branch tries to apply TCS to your NRO repatriation, escalate to the NRI cell; it's a category error. Two genuine edge cases, though: money your resident parents send you abroad travels under their LRS and can attract TCS on their side; and once you return to India and your status flips to resident, your own outward transfers move onto LRS rails — TCS included. Even then, TCS is a prepayment, not a cost: it's credited against your Indian tax liability and refunded if excess.

Timing the conversion on a large remittance

The exchange-rate margin is a negotiation; the exchange-rate level is a risk, and on a large remittance it dwarfs every fee in this article. On USD 235,000, a one-rupee move in USD/INR — the kind that happens inside an ordinary fortnight — shifts your proceeds by nearly USD 2,700. Two tools tame it. The first is splitting: nothing requires the remittance to travel as one wire, and staggering a large sum into two or three tranches over a few weeks averages your rate the same way a SIP averages a purchase. The second is forward cover — most large banks will book a forward contract for an NRI customer against a documented remittance, locking today's rate for settlement a few weeks out, which is precisely the window in which your CA certificate and bank processing happen anyway. Ask the treasury desk, not the teller.

What you should generally not do is wait. The rupee's long-run drift against the dollar has averaged 3–4% a year of depreciation, but around that drift it swings both ways for months at a time, and NRO balances earning taxed interest while you wait for a better rate are not a free option. If the money's job is abroad, the historically sound default has been to execute the plan on schedule, hedge the paperwork window with a forward, and spend your negotiating energy on the margin — the one variable the bank will actually move on request.

At the branch, and what never to do

However clean your law, the transaction closes at a bank branch, and your bank's checklist will vary: expect at minimum the outward remittance application (Form A2), the 15CA/145 acknowledgment and CA certificate, source-of-funds documents, your PAN, and the Master Direction's undertaking about legitimate receivables. Larger private banks process these weekly as routine; a sleepy branch may need its NRI cell looped in, so ask for that desk directly. On conversion, the same exchange-rate margin battle we describe in the UAE remittance guide applies in reverse — negotiate the rate on any large transfer, because 0.5% of ₹4 crore is ₹2 lakh.

And two things are never worth it: routing money through relatives' accounts to manufacture extra USD-1-million windows, and any informal channel that promises to skip the paperwork. Both are contraventions that Section 13 of FEMA prices at up to three times the sum involved. The legal route costs a CA's fee and three weeks. It's the cheapest thing in this entire process.

Frequently asked questions

How long does an NRO repatriation actually take?

For a straightforward transfer of deposits or accumulated rent, budget two to three weeks: a few days for the CA to verify the trail and issue the certificate, a day to file the online declaration, and one to two weeks for the bank's compliance review and the SWIFT leg. A property sale is a different clock — the lower-deduction certificate alone can take a few weeks to a couple of months, so the realistic end-to-end figure from agreeing a price to money abroad is two to three months. The single biggest accelerator is having the source documents assembled before you engage the CA.

Can I take out more than USD 1 million in one financial year?

Only with the RBI's prior approval, which is granted case by case and not quickly — so almost nobody plans around it. The standard, entirely legitimate answer is to straddle the financial year: remit part of the sum in March and the balance in April, using two annual windows a few weeks apart. A married couple holding assets jointly has another honest doubling, since the ceiling applies per person to their own funds. What is never the answer is routing money through relatives' accounts to manufacture extra windows — that's a FEMA contravention, not planning.

Do I pay TCS when I repatriate from my NRO account?

No. Tax collected at source on foreign remittances attaches to the Liberalised Remittance Scheme, which is a route for residents. An NRI remitting from NRO under the USD 1 million remittance-of-assets facility is on a different track, and no TCS applies — if a branch quotes you a TCS figure, ask for the NRI cell. The exceptions run the other way: resident relatives sending you money abroad face TCS under their own LRS, and once you return to India and become resident, your outward transfers move onto LRS rails too.

Is repatriation itself taxed in my home country?

Moving your own money across a border is not income, so the wire itself triggers no tax in the US, UK, Canada, or Australia. What those countries tax is the underlying event — the rent when it accrued, the capital gain when you sold — generally in the same year it arose, regardless of whether the money ever left India. The Indian tax you paid is then creditable against the home-country bill under the relevant treaty. The old UK remittance basis — where bringing money in could itself matter — was abolished from April 2025; only its transitional rules for pre-2025 income still make remittance timing relevant for some long-term UK residents. If that's you, take advice before wiring.

Can I repatriate money I inherited?

Yes — the USD 1 million window expressly covers assets received by inheritance or legacy, and there is no Indian inheritance tax to settle first. The gating item is proof of entitlement: death certificate, will and probate or a legal-heir or succession certificate, and the transmission or mutation records showing the assets moving into your name. Remember that income the inherited assets generate after they become yours is ordinary taxable Indian income, and selling an inherited asset uses the previous owner's cost and holding period for capital gains.

What does the bank's compliance desk actually scrutinize?

Source of funds, above everything. Money that has sat quietly in your NRO account with a clean statement trail sails through; the red flags are recent large credits from third parties, cash deposits, and balances that hopped between accounts shortly before the remittance request — patterns that look like layering even when they're innocent. The Master Direction obliges the bank to satisfy itself the funds are your legitimate receivables, not borrowed or lent for the occasion. A one-page money trail — what came from where, with statement references — shortens every review.

Should I remit abroad or just move the money to my NRE account?

If you don't need the money in your home currency yet, an NRO-to-NRE transfer is often the smarter move: it uses the same USD 1 million window and the same tax-settled paperwork, but the money stays in India earning interest that's tax-exempt in India, and it becomes freely repatriable forever after. Think of it as pre-clearing the exit while deferring the currency conversion. The trade-offs — rupee exposure, home-country tax on the interest — are covered in our account guide.

Do I need a CA certificate for every single remittance?

Formally, no. Taxable remittances aggregating up to ₹5 lakh in a year need only the self-declared Part A of the online form; a 33-item exempt list needs no form at all; and there's a respectable argument that transferring your own already-taxed capital isn't chargeable to tax in the first place. In practice, banks demand the CA certificate on nearly every NRO repatriation of substance because it moves the compliance risk onto your accountant. Budget for it on anything large, and treat a certificate-free transfer as the exception you'll occasionally be granted, not the rule.