Inheritance and Estate Tax for NRIs: Why India Charges Nothing on Receipt, and Where US, UK and Canadian Death Taxes Quietly Bite

Your father in Pune passes away and leaves you, in Dubai, a flat he bought in 2005, a clutch of fixed deposits, and a demat account holding Infosys and HDFC Bank shares. Your first instinct, trained by years of hearing about "death taxes" in the West, is to brace for a tax bill on the inheritance itself. There is none. India abolished estate duty in 1985 and never replaced it. The flat, the deposits, and the shares pass to you with zero Indian tax at the moment of transfer, whatever they are worth and wherever you live.

That is the easy half, and it is genuinely good news. The harder half splits into two problems. The first is purely Indian and modest: the absence of an inheritance tax does not make an inherited estate tax-free forever, because the income those assets throw off and the gain when you sell them are taxed in your hands, on a cost base reaching all the way back to what the previous owner paid. The second is foreign and can be enormous. A US green card pulls your entire worldwide estate, the Pune flat included, inside US estate tax; merely holding US shares as a non-resident drops the threshold to USD 60,000; long enough in Britain and the UK taxes your worldwide estate by residence; and Canada deems you to have sold everything you own the day you die. India is the gentle jurisdiction here. The country you moved to is usually the dangerous one.

The 30-second answer: India has no inheritance tax and no estate tax; estate duty was abolished in 1985, and receiving an inheritance is not taxable income under Section 56(2)(x), which excludes anything received under a will or by inheritance. What is taxed comes later: the income the inherited asset earns (rent, interest, dividends) and the capital gain when you sell. On sale your cost is the previous owner's cost (Section 49(1)) and the previous owner's holding period is added to yours (Explanation 1 to Section 2(42A)); for pre-April-2001 assets you may substitute the April 1, 2001 fair market value. An NRI pays 12.5% without indexation on long-term gains for transfers on or after July 23, 2024. Foreign death taxes do apply: US estate tax on a US green-card holder's worldwide estate (USD 15 million exemption in 2026) but only USD 60,000 for a non-resident alien on US-situs assets, both to 40%; UK inheritance tax at 40% above 325,000 pounds once you are a long-term UK resident; and Canada's deemed disposition, which taxes capital gains at death.

This guide is part of our NRI tax-filing series. For the full picture of putting the return together, start with the NRI ITR filing guide for AY 2026-27, then come back here for the inheritance and estate detail.

What follows untangles three questions. The Indian position: why receipt is tax-free and what that exemption does not cover. The tax that does arise on inherited Indian assets: the income they earn and the carryover-cost gain when you sell. And the foreign death taxes India's silence cannot shield you from, with the country differences that decide whether your exposure is zero, a USD 60,000 problem, or a tax on your worldwide wealth.

India has no inheritance tax, and the receipt is genuinely free

The single fact that surprises NRIs who have absorbed Western assumptions is that India does not tax inheritance at all. No estate duty, no inheritance tax, no "death tax", no return to file on receipt. It was not always so: the Estate Duty Act, 1953 levied duty on property passing on death at rates that climbed to 85%, abolished for deaths on or after March 16, 1985 on the view that it raised little, cost much to collect, and double-taxed assets that had already borne wealth tax. Wealth tax itself went in 2016, and every Budget since has left this untouched, so nothing is charged on the transmission of assets on death.

The income-tax law reinforces the point rather than merely leaving a gap. Section 56(2)(x), which sweeps gifts into tax as income from other sources when they exceed Rs 50,000 from non-relatives, carries an explicit carve-out: it does not apply to any sum of money or property received under a will or by way of inheritance. Inheritance is affirmatively excluded from the one provision that might otherwise have caught it. Under the Income-tax Act, 2025, effective April 1, 2026, Section 56(2)(x) is renumbered Section 92, with the exclusion carried over word for word.

Three consequences follow, whatever your residential status. The amount is irrelevant: inherit Rs 5 lakh or Rs 50 crore, the receipt is not taxable. The asset type is irrelevant for receipt: cash, a flat, agricultural land, shares, fund units, jewellery, gold, an FCNR deposit, all pass tax-free at transfer, the differences surfacing only later when they earn income or are sold. And your being an NRI is irrelevant: the flat passes to you in London precisely as it would to your brother in Mumbai.

This is sharply different from the gift position, where a non-relative gift over Rs 50,000 is taxable and, since the 2019 and 2023 amendments, a resident-to-NRI cash gift can be deemed to accrue in India. Inheritance sidesteps all of it, which matters because families sometimes "gift" an asset during the owner's lifetime when waiting for it to pass by will would have been cleaner and cheaper. For the contrast, see gift tax for NRIs in India.

The income the inherited asset earns is yours from the date of death

Here is where NRIs relax one beat too early. The inheritance is free, but the inherited asset becomes yours, and the income it produces from the date of death onward is your income, taxable in the year it arises, often as new Indian-source income you did not have before. The date of death draws the line: income accruing up to it belonged to the deceased and is settled in the estate's final return, while income after it is the heir's.

An inherited flat you let out produces income from house property, taxed after the 30% standard deduction and municipal taxes, and taxable for an NRI wherever you live; the tenant or platform must deduct TDS, with mechanics in tax on Indian rental income for NRIs. Inherited deposits, re-registered into your name and typically swept into an NRO account, throw off interest taxed as income from other sources, the bank deducting TDS at roughly 30% plus surcharge and cess on NRO interest before treaty relief, covered in tax on NRO interest. Inherited shares and funds produce dividends taxed at slab with TDS, and capital gains when realised, in NRI dividend tax in India.

The practical sting is the filing obligation that arrives with the assets: if the inherited income plus your other Indian income crosses the basic exemption, you file an Indian return, possibly for the first time in years, and many NRIs discover this only when a bank TDS entry shows up against a half-forgotten PAN. The route is in the NRI ITR guide for AY 2026-27.

When you sell, your cost reaches back to the person who died

The big number, when it comes, is almost always the capital gain on selling an inherited asset. Two rules govern it, and both reach back to the person you inherited from in a way residents and NRIs alike underestimate.

The first is that the cost steps back to the previous owner under Section 49(1). Your cost of acquisition is not the market value on the date you inherited, and it is not zero. It is the actual price the previous owner paid. If your father bought the flat for Rs 18 lakh in 2005, your cost is Rs 18 lakh, even if it was worth Rs 1.5 crore the day you inherited it, so the entire appreciation across his ownership is taxed in your hands when you sell. There is no "step-up to date-of-death value" of the kind US heirs enjoy on US assets, and that asymmetry catches US-resident NRIs who assume the Indian system mirrors the one they file under at home.

The second is that the holding period steps back too, under Explanation 1 to Section 2(42A): the previous owner's holding is added to yours, so the 2005 purchase makes the flat long-term the instant you inherit it, even if you sell the following week. This one almost always helps, pushing the gain into the long-term band.

For an NRI, the long-term rate on a transfer registered on or after July 23, 2024 is 12.5% without indexation, plus surcharge and the 4% cess. The pre-July-2024 alternative of 20% with indexation, and the choice between the two methods, was granted to resident individuals and HUFs only, so an NRI should plan on the 12.5% no-indexation figure and not bank on indexation rescuing an old, slowly-appreciating flat. The buyer must also deduct TDS under Section 195, typically on the full sale consideration unless you obtain a lower-deduction certificate first, with the machinery in selling property in India as an NRI and the dedicated selling inherited property and NRI tax guide.

The one lever that genuinely lowers an old gain is the pre-April-1-2001 substitution. If the previous owner acquired the asset before April 1, 2001, you are not stuck with a tiny 1970s cost: under Section 55(2)(b) the cost can be substituted with the fair market value as on April 1, 2001, capped at the stamp duty value where one exists. The NRI catch is that the indexation which historically paired with this substitution belongs to the 20%-with-indexation route the NRI cannot use, so the FMV-2001 figure raises your base cost but cannot be indexed forward. The position is debated and asset-specific, so for a pre-2001 asset with a large gain, commission a registered valuer's valuation and take a CA's view. Listed shares and funds follow different cost and grandfathering rules, set out in capital gains tax on NRI shares and mutual funds. None of this strips you of the usual shelters: the long-term gain on an inherited house can be reinvested under Section 54, parked in bonds under Section 54EC (up to Rs 50 lakh), or sheltered under Section 54F, all in capital gains exemptions under Sections 54, 54EC and 54F.

Put real numbers on the carryover-cost rule. Anil in Dubai inherits a Pune flat his father bought in 2005 for Rs 18,00,000 and died holding in 2023; Anil sells it in FY 2025-26 for Rs 1,40,00,000, registered after July 23, 2024. Inheriting it was not taxable, Indian tax on the receipt nil. On sale, his father's holding makes it long-term, and his cost is his father's Rs 18,00,000, not the date-of-death value (no FMV-2001 substitution, since the father bought after 2001). The gain is Rs 1,22,00,000, taxed at 12.5% (Rs 15,25,000); the gain crosses Rs 1 crore so the 15% surcharge cap and 4% cess apply, an all-in tax near Rs 18,23,900. Had the law given a date-of-death step-up to, say, Rs 1,30,00,000, the gain would have been Rs 10,00,000 and the tax under Rs 1.5 lakh, a difference of more than Rs 16 lakh. It does not, and that gap is the price of Section 49(1). Without a Section 197 certificate the buyer deducts Section 195 TDS on the full Rs 1.4 crore, so Anil gets the certificate or files for the refund, deposits the net to his NRO account, and repatriates under the USD 1 million cap, splitting across two years since Rs 1.4 crore is roughly USD 1.6 million. Inheriting cost nothing; selling cost over eighteen lakh, entirely because the cost base reached back two decades.

The country comparison that actually decides your exposure

The right answer on death taxes depends almost entirely on where you live and what immigration status you hold. India taxes none of it; the risk lives in your country of residence.

Your situation	Death tax on inheriting or dying	What is in scope	Threshold / rate (2026)
Stays Indian (UAE-resident NRI)	None in India; none in the UAE	Nothing	UAE has no estate, inheritance or capital gains tax
US green-card holder or US-domiciled NRI	US estate tax on death	Worldwide estate, including Indian flat and funds	USD 15 million exemption, then to 40%
US non-resident alien (H-1B, or NRI abroad holding US assets)	US estate tax on death	US-situs assets only (US shares, US real estate, US-domiciled ETFs, US retirement accounts)	USD 60,000 exemption, then to 40%
Long-term UK resident (10 of last 20 tax years)	UK inheritance tax on death	Worldwide estate, including Indian assets	325,000 pound nil-rate band, then 40%
Canadian-resident NRI	No estate tax, but deemed disposition at death	Capital gain on all assets, as if sold at FMV the day before death	50% inclusion to CAD 250,000 of gains, 66.67% above, taxed at slab

The line that surprises people most is in rows two and three: a US green-card holder and a long-term UK resident are both taxed on their worldwide estate, so the Pune flat your father left you sits inside a foreign death-tax net even though it never leaves India and India charges nothing, with no Indian estate tax to credit against the foreign bill. The sections below take each regime in turn.

US estate tax, part one: the green-card trap on your worldwide wealth

The heaviest and least-understood exposure is not the USD 60,000 situs rule most articles lead with. It is what happens once an NRI becomes US-domiciled, which a green card does almost automatically and long US residence can do even without one.

The US taxes a citizen's or a domiciliary's worldwide estate on death. The exemption is large, USD 15 million per person for 2026, made permanent and indexed from 2027 by the One Big Beautiful Bill Act of July 4, 2025. A green-card holder is treated as US-domiciled and gets that same exemption, which sounds generous until the other half: above it the estate is taxed to 40%, and the base is the whole world, counting your US 401(k), your US brokerage, your house in New Jersey, and your inherited flat in Pune and your Indian mutual funds. India's lack of an estate tax does not reduce the figure by a rupee, and because India has no estate tax treaty with the US the DTAA gives no credit against the bill on the Indian assets.

For most green-card-holding NRIs the USD 15 million cushion means no estate tax is actually due, and that is the calming part. But two groups should not relax. The founder or senior executive whose combined US and Indian assets approach USD 15 million is squarely exposed, and the exposure grows with every appreciating Indian property. And the green-card holder married to a non-US-citizen spouse loses the unlimited marital deduction that lets citizens pass everything to a spouse tax-free; transfers to a non-citizen spouse are capped (annual exclusion USD 190,000 for 2026) unless routed through a Qualified Domestic Trust. An Indian couple where one spouse holds a green card and the other does not can stumble into estate tax on the first death because they assumed "everything passes to my wife" works as it does for citizens. It does not. The uncomfortable bottom line: a green card converts your entire global net worth, India included, into a US estate-tax base, a reason to think hard before pursuing one if your wealth is large and mostly Indian.

US estate tax, part two: the USD 60,000 situs trap for everyone else

The other US exposure catches the NRI who is not US-domiciled: the H-1B holder who has not taken a green card, and the NRI living anywhere who simply owns US investments. For a non-resident alien the US taxes only US-situs assets, but the exemption collapses to a flat USD 60,000, above which the same scale to 40% applies, with Form 706-NA due once US-situs assets exceed that figure.

What counts as US-situs is the whole game, and it is more precise than "anything American". Shares of US corporations are US-situs even when held through a foreign broker, because situs follows the company, not the brokerage, so Apple or Tesla stock in your Dubai account counts. US real estate is US-situs, and US-domiciled ETFs and mutual funds (Vanguard, iShares and SPDR funds organised in the US) are US-situs even when they hold nothing but US stocks. A 401(k) or IRA is generally treated as US-situs, though its precise situs is debated among practitioners. What is not US-situs is widely missed: cash in a US bank deposit account is generally not US-situs, and life insurance proceeds on a non-resident alien's life are not US-situs. Two NRIs with identical net worth can have wildly different exposure depending only on the wrappers they chose.

The fix is well known and free. Holding US-index exposure through Ireland-domiciled UCITS ETFs that track the same S&P 500 or total-market indices removes the US situs entirely, because a UCITS fund is not a US asset even when it holds 100% US stocks. For an NRI in Dubai or Singapore, choosing the Ireland-domiciled version of an index fund over the US-listed one is the single highest-value estate decision available, and it costs nothing. For how this interacts with US-listed RSUs, see RSU and ESOP taxation for NRIs.

Put the contrast in numbers. Priya is an NRI in New Jersey on an H-1B visa, not US-domiciled. She holds a USD 700,000 portfolio of US-listed shares and a US-domiciled S&P 500 ETF, plus a 401(k) worth USD 200,000, alongside an inherited Mumbai flat and Indian funds. Her Indian assets pass with no Indian estate tax. But her US-situs estate is USD 900,000 against a USD 60,000 exemption, leaving USD 840,000 taxable on a scale reaching 40%, an estate-tax bill in the low-to-mid six figures of dollars before those US assets reach her heirs, with no DTAA relief. Had she held the equity through the Ireland-domiciled UCITS version, that USD 700,000 would have been outside US situs, cutting the taxable estate to the USD 200,000 401(k) and the tax to a fraction. The exposure came not from how much she had but from the wrappers she bought.

UK inheritance tax: residence replaced domicile on April 6, 2025

The UK regime changed materially on April 6, 2025, squarely aimed at people like Indian-origin professionals in Britain. Until then, IHT on worldwide assets turned on domicile and a "deemed domicile" test of 15 of the last 20 years. From April 6, 2025 the UK switched to a residence-based system built on a long-term residence test: your worldwide estate falls within UK IHT once you have been UK tax-resident for at least 10 of the previous 20 tax years. Below that, only your UK-situated assets are in scope, not your Indian flat or global portfolio.

IHT is charged at 40% above the nil-rate band of 325,000 pounds, frozen until April 2031, with a further residence nil-rate band where a main home passes to direct descendants and transfers between spouses both within the UK net generally exempt. The band is small relative to property values, so a long-term UK resident's Indian flat plus UK home routinely sail past it.

The feature that traps NRIs is the "IHT tail." Becoming a long-term resident does not switch off worldwide exposure the moment you leave: your estate stays in the UK net for a tail of a minimum of three years (for 10 to 13 years of residence) rising by one year per further year to a maximum of ten years (for the full 20), resetting only after ten consecutive years of non-residence. So an Indian professional who spent 12 years in Britain and then moved back to India or on to Dubai can still have their Indian assets, the inherited flat included, exposed to UK IHT at 40% for years after leaving. India will not tax the inheritance, but the UK may tax the worldwide estate of a long-term UK resident, Indian assets and all, with no Indian estate tax to credit against it. This calls for a will that works across both jurisdictions and usually cross-border advice, in NRI estate planning and wills.

Canada and the UAE: the deemed-sale death tax, and the clean one

Canada is the regime NRIs miss because it does not call itself an estate tax. Canada has no estate or inheritance tax. What it has is the deemed disposition on death: under the Income Tax Act, the deceased is treated as having sold every capital asset at fair market value immediately before death, and the resulting gain is taxed on the final "terminal" return. For 2026 the inclusion rate is 50% on the first CAD 250,000 of gains in the year and 66.67% above, taxed at the deceased's marginal rate, with the principal residence exempt and a transfer to a surviving spouse rolling over tax-free until the survivor sells or dies. For a Canadian-resident NRI, death triggers a capital-gains reckoning on the whole portfolio, including appreciated Indian assets, because Canada taxes residents on worldwide gains. It is a death tax in everything but name.

The UAE is the opposite, and the reason so many NRIs end up in Dubai: no personal income tax, no capital gains tax, and no estate or inheritance tax. A UAE-resident NRI who inherits Indian assets faces nothing in India on receipt and nothing in the UAE on death, with the only Indian tax being the ordinary capital gain if and when the asset is sold. The Gulf is the clean jurisdiction, which is exactly why a green-card chase or a long UK stay deserves more thought than NRIs give it: the death-tax cost of where you settle can dwarf any income-tax saving.

Put the worldwide-estate point in numbers. Rakesh holds a US green card in California with a US estate of USD 5 million and inherits his mother's Pune flat and Indian portfolio worth USD 1.5 million together. Nothing is due in India, but his US estate-tax base is now USD 6.5 million of worldwide assets, the Indian USD 1.5 million squarely inside it. He is under the USD 15 million exemption, so no tax is due today, which reassures most green-card holders. The warning is the trajectory: if his US business and Indian property compound past USD 15 million, the slice above is taxed to 40%, with no DTAA credit on the Indian portion because India has no estate-tax treaty and no estate tax to offset. A non-resident-alien cousin holding the same USD 1.5 million of purely Indian assets would owe the US nothing. The entire difference is the green card.

FEMA: holding and repatriating an inherited estate

Inheriting Indian assets is permitted under FEMA with few restrictions; moving the money out is where the rules bite. An NRI can inherit any immovable property in India, including agricultural land, plantation property and a farmhouse an NRI cannot otherwise buy, and inheritance is the one lawful route to holding agricultural land. No prior RBI approval is needed to inherit from a person who was resident in India; approval is needed only where the property was itself inherited from a foreign national. Inherited deposits move into an NRO account and securities are re-registered in your name, and the income they earn, rent, interest and dividends, is credited to that NRO account, not the NRE account reserved for income earned abroad (NRE, NRO and FCNR accounts).

Repatriation is the constrained step. Sale proceeds and inherited balances go out of the NRO account subject to the FEMA limit of USD 1 million per financial year per individual, above which you need prior RBI approval. Each remittance needs Form 15CA (filed by you) and Form 15CB (a CA's certificate that Indian tax on the underlying gain has been paid), without which the bank releases nothing abroad (the NRO repatriation process). The sequence for a flat you mean to sell and take abroad: title into your name, sell, let the buyer deduct Section 195 TDS, deposit the net to your NRO account, pay the capital gains tax, obtain Form 15CB, file Form 15CA, and remit within the cap, splitting across years where the proceeds exceed it.

Documentation: what actually unlocks the assets

The tax may be nil on receipt, but the paperwork stands between you and the assets, and the right document depends on whether there is a will and what you are claiming.

• The will, kept in original, governs where the deceased left a valid one.
• Probate, a court's certification that the will is valid and the executor may act, is mandatory for wills made in, and immovable property situated in, the presidency towns of Mumbai, Kolkata and Chennai, and is frequently demanded by banks and registrars before transferring high-value assets even elsewhere. Where the will is contested it is unavoidable.
• Succession certificate, where there is no will, is the civil-court instrument establishing the heirs' right to the deceased's debts and securities, the standard route for an intestate financial estate.
• Legal heir certificate, a lighter document from local revenue authorities, is used for pensions and smaller matters and is generally not sufficient to transfer substantial property or securities.
• Mutation of property moves the title into your name in the municipal and land records; until it is done you may struggle to sell or prove ownership.

Two documents matter for your eventual tax bill, not just the transfer, and they are the ones families lose. The death certificate fixes the date dividing the deceased's income from yours. And the previous owner's original purchase deed and cost records are essential, because your capital-gains cost is the previous owner's cost under Section 49(1); for a pre-2001 asset you also need a registered valuer's April 1, 2001 valuation. Track these down while the family records are accessible, because reconstructing a 2005 purchase price after a sale, when the gain hangs on it, is genuinely painful. The structuring of the estate itself, including a will covering Indian and foreign assets, is in NRI estate planning and wills.

Edge cases

Inheritance is not a gift. Section 56(2)(x) taxes non-relative gifts over Rs 50,000, and since the 2019 and 2023 amendments a resident-to-NRI cash gift can be deemed Indian income, but inheritance is specifically excluded. A gift made in genuine contemplation of imminent death (donatio mortis causa) is also excluded, mirroring the inheritance treatment. Do not let the gift rules frighten you about an inheritance; they are a different provision with an explicit carve-out, contrasted in gift tax for NRIs in India.

Agricultural land. An NRI cannot buy agricultural land, plantation property or a farmhouse, but can inherit it, the principal lawful route to holding such land. On a later sale the buyer must generally be a resident.

The previous owner had himself inherited the asset. Section 49(1) looks back to the cost of the last owner who actually acquired the asset by purchase or construction, not to each intervening heir. If your father inherited the flat from your grandfather who bought it in 1998, the relevant cost is the grandfather's, and the pre-2001 FMV substitution becomes available.

Returning NRIs and Schedule FA. A returning NRI who becomes resident-and-ordinarily-resident must report inherited or owned foreign assets, including a US brokerage or 401(k), in Schedule FA, with penalties for omission under the Black Money Act; a genuine NRI generally need not. Your status in the year of sale, not the year you inherited, governs the capital-gains and TDS treatment, so a returning NRI in the RNOR phase still faces Indian capital gains on selling an inherited Indian asset. See Schedule FA foreign asset reporting and NRI residency and RNOR rules.

Nominees and multiple heirs. A nominee is a custodian, not an owner; nomination smooths the mechanics but does not override the will or succession law, so keep the two consistent. Where an asset passes to several heirs, each inherits a share with the proportionate cost and the previous owner's holding period, and is taxed on their share of the gain on a sale.

The honest read

India is the easy jurisdiction here, and the foreign side is where the money and the risk sit. That sentence is the whole guide.

On the Indian side, the advice is simple and confident. Receiving an inheritance costs you nothing, so do not let an over-cautious relative talk you into a lifetime "gift" that would have been cleaner as a bequest. Once you hold the assets, file for the income they earn, and when you sell, plan from the start on the previous owner's cost and the 12.5% no-indexation rate, because the carryover-cost rule makes the gain far larger than the date-of-death value suggests and there is no step-up to rescue you. Chase down the old purchase deed, and for a pre-2001 asset the April 1, 2001 valuation, before you need them. Get the will, the probate or succession certificate, and the mutation done, and the substantive Indian work is finished.

On the foreign side, drop the instinct that there is no death tax to worry about, because for many NRIs there emphatically is and it is not Indian. A US green card pulls your entire worldwide estate, the Indian flat included, into US estate tax at 40% above the USD 15 million exemption, with no DTAA relief: comfortable for most but a real problem for the wealthy and a trap for those with non-citizen spouses. A non-resident alien holding US assets faces the USD 60,000 situs rule, and the fix is free: hold US-index exposure through Ireland-domiciled UCITS ETFs. A long-term UK resident's worldwide estate faces 40% IHT above 325,000 pounds with a tail of up to ten years after leaving. Canada's deemed disposition taxes your gains at death whether you sell or not. The UAE is the clean jurisdiction, itself a reason to weigh the death-tax cost of where you settle, not just the income-tax one.

The recommendation I will commit to: treat the Indian inheritance as the simple part and get it clean, and if you hold US-situs assets, hold a green card, are a long-term UK resident, or live in Canada, do not self-diagnose. The exposure is foreign, large, and overlooked precisely because India trained you to expect nothing, and the cost of getting it wrong runs to hundreds of thousands of dollars or pounds, not the rupees you so happily inherited tax-free. For any sizeable US or UK footprint, a cross-border will and one session with an estate-planning adviser is the cheapest insurance you will buy.

Related guides

• Selling inherited property and NRI tax
• Capital gains tax on NRI shares and mutual funds
• Capital gains exemptions under Sections 54, 54EC and 54F
• Gift tax for NRIs in India
• NRI ITR filing for AY 2026-27
• NRI residency and RNOR rules
• Schedule FA foreign asset reporting
• RSU and ESOP taxation for NRIs
• NRI estate planning and wills
• Selling property in India as an NRI
• Tax on Indian rental income for NRIs
• Tax on NRO interest
• The NRO repatriation process
• NRE, NRO and FCNR accounts
• All Taxation guides

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This guide is general information, not tax or legal advice. The treatment of an inheritance depends on your residential status, the asset type and situs, the previous owner's acquisition history, and the estate-tax rules of your country of residence; the interaction of the pre-2001 FMV substitution with the NRI no-indexation regime, and foreign estate-tax exposure, can be situation-specific and is in places debated. Rates and provisions cited are current as of June 2026 and reflect the Income-tax Act, 2025 (effective April 1, 2026, renumbering Section 56(2)(x) as Section 92), the UK residence-based IHT regime of April 6, 2025, the US estate-tax rules and the USD 15 million exemption made permanent by the One Big Beautiful Bill Act of 2025, and Canada's deemed-disposition rules, and apply for AY 2026-27 on the Indian side. Confirm your position with a qualified chartered accountant and, for US, UK or Canadian exposure, a cross-border estate-planning adviser.