Roth IRA for US NRIs: Contributions, Backdoor Strategy, India DTAA, and the RNOR Window

You spent eight years building a Roth IRA on an H-1B, contributing every year via the backdoor route, watching it compound tax-free. Now you are planning to move back to Hyderabad in three years, and someone at a dinner party tells you that India will tax the Roth when you draw it because "all foreign income is taxable once you are a resident." You do not know whether they are right. The honest answer is: partly, but the full picture is more favourable than that dinner-party summary, and knowing the mechanics in advance changes the outcome by a material amount.

This guide covers the complete Roth IRA landscape for US-based NRIs: what the account is, who can contribute and how much, the backdoor mechanics and the pro-rata trap that catches most high earners, the mega backdoor variant, what happens under the India-US DTAA when you finally retire in India, the RNOR window that is the best Roth withdrawal opportunity most returning NRIs never use, and a worked example that ties all of it together through one person's twelve years in Seattle.

The 30-second answer: US-based NRIs (H-1B, L-1, Green Card holders who meet the substantial presence test) can contribute to a Roth IRA if they have US earned income and a MAGI below the phaseout. The 2025 limit is $7,000 ($8,000 at 50+); the phaseout is $150,000 to $165,000 (single), $236,000 to $246,000 (MFJ). Above those limits, use the backdoor Roth: non-deductible Traditional IRA contribution, immediate conversion, Form 8606 filed every year. The pro-rata rule is the trap: if you hold any other pre-tax IRA assets, roll them into a 401(k) first. Under the India-US DTAA, Traditional IRA distributions are clearly taxed only in India; Roth distributions are unsettled. The most tax-efficient exit is drawing Roth distributions during your RNOR window (roughly 2-3 years after returning to India), parking them offshore. That combination earns zero US tax (qualified distribution) and zero India tax (not received in India during RNOR).

What a Roth IRA is, and how it differs from a Traditional IRA

The Roth IRA is a US retirement account defined in IRC Section 408A. Contributions are made with after-tax dollars, meaning you get no deduction on the year's tax return. Inside the account, gains, dividends, and interest compound without annual tax. Qualified distributions (account at least five years old, owner at least 59.5) are completely tax-free, including all the growth. There are no Required Minimum Distributions (RMDs) during the original owner's lifetime.

The Traditional IRA is the mirror image. Contributions may be deductible (subject to income and workplace plan rules), growth defers, and every dollar distributed is ordinary income. RMDs begin at age 73 under the SECURE 2.0 Act.

For most long-stay NRIs, the Roth wins at the account level purely on the RMD point: you never have to draw it, so you can let it compound for as long as you live. Combine that with the DTAA uncertainty around Roth distributions being more favourable than the certainty of India taxing Traditional IRA distributions at the applicable slab rate, and the Roth is almost always the right choice for someone who expects to retire in India.

One distinction matters for this guide: a Roth 401(k), which is an after-tax contribution option inside your employer's plan, is not the same as a Roth IRA. The Roth 401(k) has RMDs. Roll it to a Roth IRA before those start, and you eliminate the forced-distribution problem. More on this under the no-RMD section below.

Contribution limits and income phaseout for 2025

The 2025 contribution limit is $7,000 per person. If you are 50 or older, the catch-up limit brings it to $8,000. These limits are per individual, not per household, so a married couple can together contribute $14,000 or $16,000 if both are 50+. The limit applies across all your IRA accounts combined (Roth and Traditional), not per account.

You must have earned income at least equal to the contribution. For most US-based NRIs on a salary, this is not a constraint, but it matters in years when you have been on leave or have no W-2.

Direct Roth IRA contributions phase out based on Modified Adjusted Gross Income (MAGI):

Filing status	2025 phaseout range	2024 phaseout range
Single / Head of Household	$150,000 to $165,000	$146,000 to $161,000
Married Filing Jointly	$236,000 to $246,000	$230,000 to $240,000
Married Filing Separately	$0 to $10,000	$0 to $10,000

Above the top of the phaseout range, direct contributions are completely disallowed. The married filing separately phaseout ($0 to $10,000) is so compressed that it is effectively a ban for any MFS filer with meaningful income.

MAGI for Roth purposes is roughly your Adjusted Gross Income before the student loan deduction, IRA deductions, and certain exclusions. It does not reduce for the Foreign Earned Income Exclusion (FEIE) under Section 911, which is the catch that surprises NRIs who take the FEIE. If you exclude $126,500 of foreign income under FEIE in 2025, that exclusion does not reduce your MAGI for Roth phaseout purposes. It does, however, reduce your earned income that counts toward the contribution, so the interaction is worth checking with your CPA if your situation involves both FEIE and a Roth contribution.

Most NRIs earning a US tech or finance salary at mid to senior levels are above the single phaseout ceiling. This is exactly the population for whom the backdoor route was invented.

Backdoor Roth IRA: the mechanics

Congress has not explicitly authorised the backdoor Roth, but the IRS has not moved to shut it down, and the SECURE Act 2.0 conference report acknowledged it as a known strategy. The mechanics are straightforward if your IRA situation is clean.

Step 1. Make a non-deductible contribution to a Traditional IRA. For 2025, this is $7,000. Because you are making it non-deductible, there is no MAGI limit on this step. File Form 8606, Part I with your return for the year to establish your after-tax basis in the Traditional IRA.

Step 2. Convert the Traditional IRA to a Roth IRA. Depending on your custodian, this can be done in a few days or even the same day. The conversion itself is not a contribution; it is a taxable event where you recognise income equal to the pre-tax portion of the amount converted.

Step 3. File Form 8606, Part II with your return for the year of conversion. This is what tells the IRS the basis you are carrying and how much of the conversion is taxable.

If you do it cleanly (no other IRA assets, conversion happens before the account earns meaningful interest), the taxable amount of the conversion is approximately zero and you have effectively gotten $7,000 into a Roth despite earning over the phaseout limit.

The key discipline: do this every year, file Form 8606 every year, and keep the form on file permanently. If you ever lose your basis documentation years later, reconstructing it from returns filed under your SSN is painful but possible, because Form 8606 filings are part of your tax record.

The pro-rata rule: the trap every high-income NRI falls into

This is the single most expensive misunderstanding I encounter in this area. People do the backdoor Roth correctly in isolation and get hit with an unexpected tax bill because they forgot about a rollover IRA from a job they left five years ago.

IRC Section 72(e) establishes the pro-rata rule: when you take a distribution or conversion from any Traditional IRA, the taxable and non-taxable portions are determined by the ratio of your aggregate after-tax basis to your aggregate Traditional IRA balance across all accounts at all custodians on 31 December of that year.

The formula is: tax-free fraction = total after-tax basis / total Traditional IRA value (all accounts combined).

Work through the numbers that demonstrate why this destroys the backdoor strategy:

Suppose you have a $100,000 rollover IRA at Fidelity from a previous employer. You contribute $7,000 non-deductible to a Traditional IRA at Schwab. You immediately convert that $7,000 Schwab IRA to a Roth.

Total Traditional IRA value across all accounts: $100,000 + $7,000 = $107,000. After-tax basis: $7,000 (the non-deductible contribution you just made). Tax-free fraction of any conversion: $7,000 / $107,000 = 6.54%. Tax-free portion of the $7,000 conversion: 6.54% x $7,000 = $458. Taxable portion of the $7,000 conversion: $6,542.

That $6,542 is ordinary income in the year of conversion. If you are in the 32% bracket, that is a $2,093 tax bill for the privilege of moving $7,000 into a Roth. You did not avoid the tax; you accelerated it and paid it in the worst possible way.

The fix is to roll your Traditional IRA assets into your current employer's 401(k) plan before you make the non-deductible contribution. A rollover from a Traditional IRA into a 401(k) is permitted under IRC Section 408(d)(3) if the 401(k) plan accepts incoming rollovers. Once that rollover is complete, your Traditional IRA balance is zero, the pro-rata calculation produces a zero taxable amount on the $7,000 conversion, and the backdoor works as intended.

Three checks before you do this:

First, confirm your employer plan accepts incoming IRA rollovers. Not all do. Many large tech company plans do (Amazon, Google, Meta plans commonly allow this), but you need to check the Summary Plan Description or ask HR directly.

Second, only pre-tax IRA money can roll into a 401(k). The non-deductible (after-tax) basis in your IRA cannot go into the 401(k); it stays behind in the Traditional IRA. This is fine, because that after-tax basis is exactly what you then convert. The pre-tax portion goes to the 401(k), the after-tax basis is converted to Roth.

Third, SEP-IRA and SIMPLE IRA balances also count in the pro-rata calculation. If you have either of those from self-employment, they need to be addressed the same way.

Mega backdoor Roth: if your plan allows it

The mega backdoor Roth is a higher-volume version of the same concept. It operates inside your 401(k) plan rather than through an IRA.

The 2025 total 401(k) contribution limit (employee contributions plus employer match plus any after-tax contributions) is $70,000 (or $77,500 at 50+). The standard pre-tax or Roth employee deferral limit is $23,500. If your plan allows after-tax (non-Roth) contributions above the $23,500 pre-tax limit, the gap between $23,500 plus your employer match and $70,000 is the space for after-tax contributions.

Once those after-tax contributions are in the plan, you convert them to a Roth. This can happen in two ways depending on what your plan permits: an in-plan Roth conversion (convert inside the 401(k)) or an in-service withdrawal to a Roth IRA. The in-service withdrawal option is the more flexible one and is what "mega backdoor Roth to Roth IRA" means in practice.

The catch: not every 401(k) plan allows after-tax contributions beyond the standard deferral, and not every plan that allows after-tax contributions also allows in-service withdrawals or in-plan conversions. This is a plan-specific feature, not a statutory right. Tech companies with high-compensation employee bases are more likely to offer it because employees ask for it, but you need to verify in your plan documents.

If your plan allows it and you execute it annually, the amounts that can enter a Roth through this channel dwarf what the backdoor IRA route allows. For someone doing this from age 30 to 45 at maximum capacity, the Roth account balance at retirement can be substantial purely on this mechanism.

India-US DTAA: how Roth IRA distributions are treated when you retire in India

This is the section where honesty matters most, because the answer is genuinely unsettled.

The India-US Double Taxation Avoidance Agreement (1989, amended by the 2006 protocol) is the treaty governing how the two countries share taxing rights. Article 20 covers "pensions and other similar remuneration paid in consideration of past employment." Traditional IRA and 401(k) distributions fall cleanly within Article 20. The treaty gives the residence country (India, for someone who has returned and is now an Indian tax resident) the primary taxing right. So a Traditional IRA distribution received by someone now resident in India is taxable in India at the applicable income slab rate, and the US does not withhold tax on it (subject to proper treaty-based withholding certificate procedures).

The Roth IRA does not fit neatly into Article 20 for the following reason: Roth contributions were made with already-taxed money, and qualified distributions are tax-free under US law. The structure is not a deferred-income pension in the traditional sense. It is closer to a personal savings account with a tax-preference on the growth.

India's domestic tax law taxes Indian residents on worldwide income under the Income Tax Act, 1961. There is no specific provision that exempts foreign retirement account distributions from Indian tax. India Revenue has not issued a circular, notification, or ruling specifically addressing Roth IRA distributions received by an Indian resident. The treaty's Article 20 pension language may or may not encompass Roth distributions, and reasonable positions exist on both sides.

In practice, most NRI tax advisors in India take a conservative approach: they treat the contributions portion as a return of capital (no tax in India) and the gains component as income or capital gains subject to Indian tax. The applicable Indian rate depends on how the gains are characterised. Some advisors argue for Section 112A long-term capital gains treatment on the equity growth component; others treat the entire gains component as other income taxable at the applicable slab. Until the CBDT or a court speaks to this specifically, both are defensible positions.

Contrast this with the Traditional IRA. Traditional IRA distributions received by an Indian resident are clearly Article 20 income, taxable in India, and you can use the standard slab rates with the benefit of the basic exemption. The Roth situation is less comfortable precisely because it does not fit the usual deferred-pension template.

One practical implication: if you are a returning NRI and you start drawing a Roth IRA as an Indian tax resident, document the contributions component (your basis) carefully, because distinguishing capital return from growth is important for computing any Indian tax obligation. Your Form 8606 history is exactly that documentation.

The RNOR window: the most tax-efficient Roth withdrawal opportunity

When a long-stay NRI returns to India after extended residence abroad, they do not immediately become a fully-taxed Indian resident. They pass through an intermediate status: Resident but Not Ordinarily Resident (RNOR).

The conditions for RNOR status are in Section 6(6) of the Income Tax Act. A person is RNOR in a given financial year if they have been a non-resident in India for nine of the ten years preceding that year, or if their India presence in the seven preceding years totals 729 days or fewer. An NRI who has been living in the US continuously for eight to twelve years will almost certainly be RNOR for two to three financial years upon return.

What makes RNOR powerful: under Section 5 of the Income Tax Act, an RNOR is taxable in India only on income that is received in India or accrues or arises in India. Foreign income not received in India is not taxable during RNOR status. This is different from a full Resident, who is taxed on worldwide income.

Apply that to a Roth IRA distribution. A qualified Roth IRA distribution is:

• Zero US tax, because qualified distributions from a Roth IRA are tax-free under US law.
• Zero India tax during RNOR, if the distribution is not remitted to India. Park it in a Singapore or UAE bank account, keep it there, and it does not touch the Indian tax net at all.

This is not a loophole or a grey area. It is the statutory framework working as designed. India's RNOR provision was explicitly crafted to give returning NRIs a transition period during which their offshore income does not immediately get pulled into the Indian tax net. Using Roth distributions in that window, and keeping them offshore, is exactly the kind of planning it enables.

The strategy has one important timing constraint: you need to be drawing Roth distributions on qualified events (owner over 59.5, and the account has passed the five-year clock). If you return to India at 45, the RNOR window is not the right time to start forced early withdrawals (which would also carry a 10% US penalty). The RNOR play works best for someone who returns at 55 to 65, has a qualified Roth, and draws during those two to three RNOR years.

No RMDs: why this matters more than people realise

For someone who intends to accumulate rather than draw, the Roth IRA's absence of Required Minimum Distributions is the most underrated advantage.

A Traditional IRA requires you to start taking RMDs at age 73 (under SECURE 2.0). The IRS forces distribution based on IRS Publication 590-B life expectancy tables, and those distributions are taxable income. For a high-value account, the mandated distributions can push you into higher tax brackets in India or the US.

A Roth IRA has no RMDs during the original owner's lifetime. You can leave the entire account intact and compounding at 80, at 90, until you or your heirs choose to draw.

One point that trips people up: a Roth 401(k) inside your employer plan is not the same as a Roth IRA for RMD purposes. The Roth 401(k) was subject to RMDs until recently, and while SECURE 2.0 eliminated Roth 401(k) RMDs starting 2024, the cleaner long-term solution is still to roll the Roth 401(k) into a Roth IRA when you leave the employer or retire. Once inside the Roth IRA wrapper, the no-RMD rule applies with no ambiguity about plan-level rules.

For NRIs who expect to be India-resident in their later years, letting the Roth compound without forced distributions keeps the India tax question deferred indefinitely. Every year of additional compounding inside the Roth is a year of zero tax on growth in both countries.

What happens to your Roth IRA when you leave the US permanently

You cannot make new Roth IRA contributions after you leave the US if you no longer have US earned income. The earned income requirement is absolute: contributions must not exceed the lesser of the annual limit ($7,000 in 2025) or your taxable compensation for the year. If you have permanently relocated, stopped working in the US, and have no US-source earned income, your contribution eligibility ends.

What you can do: keep the account open indefinitely. There is no requirement to close a Roth IRA when you leave the US. The account sits with its US custodian (Fidelity, Schwab, Vanguard), continues growing tax-free, and you can leave it for decades before drawing.

US filing obligations: simply holding a Roth IRA does not by itself create US filing obligations. If you have no other US-source income and your worldwide income is below the filing threshold for your status, you may not need to file a US return solely because you hold an open Roth IRA. That said, once you start taking distributions (even tax-free ones), the IRS wants visibility. Your custodian will issue a Form 1099-R for the year of distribution, and the distribution must be reported on your US return (with the qualified-distribution exemption noted).

From the Indian tax side: when you are an Indian resident (or RNOR), a Roth IRA is a foreign financial account from India's perspective. India introduced the Schedule FA (Foreign Assets) disclosure requirement in the Income Tax Return, and a Roth IRA should be disclosed there as a retirement or savings account held abroad. This is a reporting obligation, not a tax on the account's value. Failure to disclose foreign assets attracts penalties under the Black Money Act, so this is not optional.

From the FBAR perspective: FinCEN Form 114 (FBAR) requires US persons to report foreign financial accounts above $10,000. A Roth IRA at a US custodian is a US financial account, not a foreign one, so it does not appear on the FBAR. However, if your Roth IRA assets were somehow with a foreign custodian (through a self-directed IRA arrangement), the analysis changes. For the standard Fidelity or Schwab Roth, FBAR does not apply to the account itself.

Roth IRA and PFIC: a brief note

If your Roth IRA holds US-domiciled ETFs and mutual funds, which it almost certainly does in a standard account, there is no PFIC issue. The funds are US corporations or regulated investment companies, not foreign passive investment vehicles.

The PFIC interaction becomes relevant only in the rare case of a self-directed Roth IRA that holds non-US funds. Some self-directed IRA custodians allow investment in foreign assets. If someone held a non-US PFIC inside a Roth, the PFIC rules would technically still apply inside the account. The practical interaction is complex because Roth distributions are structured as tax-free, but PFIC excess distributions are taxed at the fund level of income recognition. Given that standard Roth investing involves US-domiciled index funds and ETFs, this is an edge case that most readers can ignore. If you are using a self-directed IRA with non-US holdings, get specific advice from a US CPA who knows both the PFIC rules and self-directed IRA structures.

Worked example: Priya's twelve years of backdoor Roth

Priya is 34, single, earning $175,000 base salary as a software engineer in Seattle. Her MAGI after 401(k) pre-tax contributions, HSA contributions, and other adjustments is $180,000 in 2025. That is above the $165,000 ceiling for direct Roth contributions, so the direct route is closed.

She also has a $120,000 rollover IRA at Fidelity, rolled over from a previous employer two years ago. That rollover is entirely pre-tax.

Step 1: clean up the pro-rata problem. Before doing anything else, Priya confirms her current employer's 401(k) plan accepts incoming rollovers. It does. She rolls the $120,000 Traditional IRA into her employer 401(k) in January. After the rollover completes and is processed, her Traditional IRA balance is zero.

Step 2: contribute non-deductible. In February, Priya contributes $7,000 to a Traditional IRA at Schwab as a non-deductible contribution. She files Form 8606 with her 2025 return establishing this $7,000 as after-tax basis.

Step 3: convert to Roth. Within a week of the contribution, while the $7,000 has earned minimal interest (say, $4), she converts the Traditional IRA to a Roth. The conversion amount is $7,004. Her basis is $7,000. Taxable amount: $4. She notes this small amount on Form 8606 Part II. Tax owed: negligible.

Step 4: repeat annually. Priya does this every year from age 34 to age 45, twelve contributions of $7,000 each (ignoring any future limit increases for simplicity). Total contributed: $84,000.

At age 46, she prepares to move back to Hyderabad. The Roth account, invested in a US total market index fund and an international US-domiciled equity fund, has grown at an average 8% annual return. A series of $7,000 annual contributions at 8% over twelve years grows to approximately $133,000 in total account value. The growth component above the Rs 69,72,000 equivalent in contributions (at roughly Rs 83 per dollar) is entirely un-taxed gain, sitting in an account that will never pay US tax on qualified distributions.

She leaves the Roth open with Schwab when she moves back. She makes no further contributions because she has no US earned income. The account continues growing.

2040: Priya reaches RNOR status. She returned to India in 2038. She satisfies the RNOR conditions: she was a non-resident for the ten preceding years. In financial year 2040-41, she is still RNOR.

2041: the RNOR withdrawal. Priya is now 59.5, and the Roth account has grown to roughly $280,000 (continuing 8% growth on the $133,000 balance over the intervening years). She withdraws $35,000 (approximately Rs 29,05,000 at an assumed 2041 exchange rate of Rs 83) from the Roth. This is a qualified distribution: she is over 59.5, and the account has been open for well over five years. Zero US tax. She does not remit the $35,000 to India. It goes into a Singapore bank account she maintains. Zero India tax (income not received in India, RNOR status applies). She reports the foreign account in Schedule FA in her India ITR. No tax in either country on this withdrawal.

She repeats this for two more financial years while still RNOR, drawing Rs 20,00,000 equivalent each year and parking it offshore. When she transitions to full Resident status, she has drawn approximately Rs 87,00,000 from the Roth during the RNOR window without paying tax in either country. The remainder of the Roth continues to compound for her heirs.

Edge cases

Married filing separately (MFS). If you file MFS for any reason, the Roth direct contribution phaseout is $0 to $10,000. That is effectively a complete bar. MFS filers almost always need the backdoor route.

Non-resident alien spouse. If your spouse is a non-resident alien (NRA) and you file MFJ with them under a Section 6013(g) election to treat them as a US resident, your combined income is included in MAGI for Roth purposes. This can push you past the MFJ phaseout. The NRA spouse can also get a Roth IRA using the backdoor method, since the MFJ election makes them a US tax resident for income purposes.

Recharacterisation is no longer permitted. The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act 2017 eliminated the ability to recharacterise a Roth conversion back to a Traditional IRA. If you convert and the market drops immediately after, you cannot undo it. Time your conversions early in the year when possible to leave yourself the most information about the account's value.

The five-year rule. There are actually two five-year rules for Roth IRAs. The first: the account must have been established and a contribution (or conversion) made at least five tax years ago for the earnings to be distributed tax-free. The clock starts 1 January of the year you make your first contribution. The second: each Roth conversion has its own five-year clock for penalty-free withdrawal of the converted principal before age 59.5. For NRIs who plan to draw after 59.5, only the first rule is relevant in practice.

Early withdrawal before 59.5. Contributions (not conversions, not earnings) can always be withdrawn from a Roth IRA penalty-free and tax-free at any time, because they were made with already-taxed money. Converted amounts are subject to the 10% early withdrawal penalty if withdrawn within five years of conversion and before 59.5. Earnings are subject to penalty and ordinary income tax if withdrawn early without a qualifying exception. If you are leaving the US before retirement age and think you might need the funds, the contribution-basis layer is the safest to draw first.

Excess contributions. If you inadvertently contributed to a Roth IRA in a year when you were above the income limit and did not use the backdoor method, you have an excess contribution subject to a 6% annual excise tax under Section 4973 for every year it remains in the account. The fix is to withdraw the excess plus earnings before the tax filing deadline (including extensions). If the deadline has passed, withdraw the excess (not the earnings) and pay the 6% for the years it was in. A CPA who handles this regularly can advise on the cleanest correction.

RNOR and foreign remittance. The RNOR strategy requires the distribution to not be received in India. If you wire the distribution directly to your Indian bank account during RNOR, it is received in India and becomes taxable. The offshore parking (Singapore, UAE, or another account) is not optional; it is the mechanism that keeps the income outside the Indian tax net. Once you are a full Resident, even money sitting offshore but accrued as income in a prior year may be taxable in India in certain cases. Timing and custody matter.

The closing read

The Roth IRA is one of the few genuinely powerful long-term financial structures available to US-based NRIs, and most of them do not use it at its full capacity. The direct contribution bar is low relative to tech-sector incomes, but the backdoor route removes that barrier entirely for anyone willing to keep a rollover IRA at zero balance. The pro-rata rule is the biggest practical risk, and it is entirely avoidable if you know it exists before you act.

The India tax picture on Roth distributions is the honest uncertainty. The Traditional 401(k) and Traditional IRA are cleaner stories under the DTAA, but the Roth's zero-US-tax qualified distribution, combined with the RNOR window, creates a legitimate two to three year period after return where neither country collects on the distribution. That window is finite, it requires advance planning (you need to have the Roth, you need to be over 59.5, and you need the offshore parking structure in place), and it is wasted by people who remit everything directly to India the moment they arrive.

Build the Roth consistently while you are in the US. Keep the Form 8606 filings on record permanently. Roll pre-tax IRA assets into your employer 401(k) each time you do a backdoor conversion. When you return to India, spend time with a CA who understands both countries before you decide when and how to draw. The effort is modest. The outcome is not.

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Cross-references

• PFIC rules for Indian mutual funds and ETFs — why Indian funds create punitive US tax, and what to hold instead
• 401(k) planning and pre-departure strategy for US NRIs — rolling your 401(k), Traditional IRA options, and what to do before you leave
• HSA triple tax advantage for US NRIs — the health savings account that outperforms Roth on a per-dollar basis for eligible plans
• 529 college savings plans for NRI families — education savings with state tax deductions, and what happens if the child studies in India
• US exit tax and the covered expatriate rules — what happens to your IRAs and other US assets when you renounce a Green Card
• US and India annual filing calendar for NRIs — every deadline from FBAR to ITR in one place
• US Social Security from India under the DTAA — how Social Security benefits are taxed in India and the treaty exemption
• US situs estate tax for NRIs — IRA balances as US situs assets, and estate planning considerations for non-domiciliaries
• NRE account interest taxation and repatriation — where to park funds repatriated from the US
• RNOR tax planning for returning NRIs — full guide to the RNOR window, what income is sheltered, and how long it lasts
• India-US DTAA comprehensive guide — Article-by-Article treatment of the 1989 treaty and the 2006 protocol, including pensions

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Disclaimers: This article is general information only and does not constitute tax, legal, or financial advice. US tax law is complex and the figures and rules described here (contribution limits, phaseout thresholds, penalty rates) change annually with IRS inflation adjustments and legislative changes; verify current-year numbers before acting. The treatment of Roth IRA distributions under Indian domestic tax law and the India-US DTAA is unsettled, and different qualified advisors take materially different positions on it. Readers should consult a US-qualified CPA (ideally one with dual-country expertise) and an Indian Chartered Accountant familiar with NRI taxation before making contribution, conversion, or withdrawal decisions. Nothing in this article should be relied upon as advice specific to your situation.