FEMA Repatriation Rules: Moving Money Out of India

How freely you can move money out of India depends entirely on which account it sits in, because that account already tells FEMA (the Foreign Exchange Management Act) where the money originally came from. Money you earned abroad and parked in an NRE or FCNR account moves out with no restriction at all -- both principal and interest, any amount, any time. Money you earned INSIDE India -- rent, dividends, a pension, sale proceeds sitting in an NRO account -- is capped and requires documentation, because it is Indian-sourced income and FEMA wants to be sure Indian tax has actually been paid on it before it leaves.

Both NRE and FCNR accounts hold money that was already earned outside India and voluntarily brought in -- so FEMA treats sending it back out as simply undoing that choice, with no restrictions. There is no annual cap, and routine transfers do not require a CA certificate or Form 15CA/15CB (Form 145/146 from April 2026) the way NRO repatriation does.

Under FEMA Regulations 13(R)/2016-RB, an NRI can repatriate up to USD 1 million per financial year from their NRO account balances -- covering income like pension, dividends, salary, rent, and permitted business profits -- provided all applicable Indian taxes have been paid on that money and the necessary documentation is filed.

That documentation requirement scales with the amount: for remittances up to ₹5 lakh, banks typically ask only for a CA certificate confirming the source of funds and tax payment on their letterhead; above ₹5 lakh, a formal Chartered Accountant certificate (historically Form 15CB, now Form 146 for remittances from April 2026) is mandatory alongside the remitter's own declaration (Form 15CA, now Form 145), with the CA generating a Unique Document Identification Number via the ICAI portal for authenticity.

One genuinely useful, easy-to-miss fact: TCS (Tax Collected at Source) does NOT apply to NRO-to-NRE or NRO-to-foreign-account repatriation -- Section 206C(1G) of the Income Tax Act explicitly excludes it. This surprises a lot of NRIs, because TCS is heavily associated with foreign remittances in general (see the LRS section below) -- but that TCS regime is for a different scheme entirely.

The Liberalised Remittance Scheme (LRS) is what you will most often see mentioned alongside "TCS on foreign remittance" -- and it is worth being precise about, because it is easy to assume it applies to NRIs when it does not. LRS lets RESIDENT Indian individuals remit up to USD 2,50,000 per financial year abroad for permitted purposes (travel, education, medical treatment, gifts, and more). It is a scheme for people who are tax residents of India sending their own money out for the first time -- not for NRIs moving already-earned NRO or NRE income, which is governed by the FEMA 13(R) framework described above instead.

This is also where the TCS (Tax Collected at Source) rules that NRIs often hear about actually apply: TCS on LRS remittances is nil up to ₹10 lakh per financial year (effective April 1, 2025), then 0% for loan-funded education, a flat 2% for other education/medical/overseas-tour-package remittances (cut from a 5%/20% tiered structure by Budget 2026), and 20% for most other purposes including investments -- collected by the remitting bank and adjustable against the remitter's eventual income tax liability. None of this applies to an NRI repatriating their own NRO or NRE balances, which is a resident-only scheme.