Return to India Planner

"Should I move back this year or wait?" is a big decision, and the numbers are easy to get wrong. This planner converts your foreign corpus into Indian rupees at your target move year, applies Indian inflation to the lifestyle you want, and compares the corpus you'll have against the corpus you'll need.

Your Indian and foreign portfolios can grow at different rates (the 11% and 7% defaults are assumptions, so set your own), and the rupee has lost about 3.7% a year against the US dollar over both the last 10 and 20 years (ECB reference rates, Sep 2006 to Sep 2026). So the ₹ value of your corpus at move year is not simply "today's corpus × today's FX rate". The projection here handles both sides.

Illustrative example, using the planner’s defaults. You are 42 and work in the US, with $500,000 across your 401(k), brokerage and savings, and you save $3,000 a month. You also have ₹20 lakh in India. You plan to move back in 3 years, at 45, and want to spend ₹2 lakh a month in today’s rupees. The planner assumes 7% a year abroad, 11% in India, the rupee falling 3.5% a year from ₹96 per dollar, and 6% inflation in India. It shows:

• Corpus at your move: ₹8.02 Cr (foreign ₹7.75 Cr at ₹106.4 per USD, plus Indian ₹27.35 L)
• It supports ₹2.67 L a month at 4%, against the ₹2.38 L a month you will need by then
• Corpus needed: ₹7.15 Cr, a surplus of ₹87.88 L

That surplus assumes the foreign money comes out tax-free. Enter 15% as the tax on cashing out foreign assets and the corpus drops to ₹6.86 Cr, a gap of ₹28.39 L. How much of your $500,000 sits in a pre-tax 401(k) can decide whether you are on track, so work that out before you pick a move year.

A long-term NRI who moves back usually gets RNOR (Resident but Not Ordinarily Resident) status for 2 tax years after the move year, under the "Non-Resident in 9 of the 10 preceding years" test in Section 6 of the Income-tax Act, 2025. During RNOR, foreign income that accrues and is received outside India is not taxed in India. You can withdraw your 401(k) or IRA, sell foreign shares and close US brokerage accounts without Indian tax on the gain. US tax may still apply, and RSUs that vest for work done in India are Indian income.

Two levers to extend the RNOR window:

• Move in the second half of a tax year (say, mid-October 2027 instead of April 2027). That keeps you under 182 days in India in tax year 2027-28. Arriving on 1 October would already give 182, because the arrival day counts. But the 182-day test is not the only one. Someone moving back for good is not "visiting", so the 60-day test also applies. You stay NRI for 2027-28 only if you spent fewer than 60 days in India that year, or fewer than 365 days in the 4 preceding tax years. If you do stay NRI, your 2 RNOR years become 2028-29 and 2029-30.
• Sell or withdraw foreign holdings while RNOR. Gains and withdrawals taken during the RNOR years stay out of Indian tax, while the same sales after you become ROR are taxable in India (with credit for foreign tax under the tax treaty, where available).

Use our Residential Status Calculator to verify your projected status year-by-year.

The Trinity Study 4% rule was built on 20th-century US data. In India, real (inflation-adjusted) equity returns have historically been higher, but so has inflation. A range of 3.5–4.5% is a common planning assumption, depending on portfolio equity share and horizon. This planner uses 4%: on ₹5 crore, that is about ₹1.67 lakh/month to start, and the rule is meant to last around 30 years, not forever.

If your desired lifestyle is closer to ₹3 lakh/month in today's rupees and you're moving in 5–7 years, then at 6% inflation that spending grows to about ₹4–4.5 lakh/month by the move. You would need roughly ₹12–13.5 crore at a 4% withdrawal rate, or ₹13.8–15.5 crore at a more cautious 3.5% to allow for sequence-of-returns risk over 30+ years of retirement.