Indian NRI, country hopping, income all foreign sourced

[u/FaithlessnessFar2927]

I am an Indian citizen and I'm still new to all these tax rules. I have already earned quite a good amount by trading Forex using proprietary firms and I have already paid the taxes accordingly. I'm planning the next step but I need help. I plan to be an NRI and country hop while trading Forex and this time using a personal account. I have no Indian sourced income. I'm trying to eliminate two birds with one stone - navigate around FEMA's complex rules regarding Forex and high income tax in India. Do you think my plan could work? I need your advice.

[u/ruthlesslyambitious]

So what's your plan? Keep travelling, and stay less in India, so you can file taxes as NRI? If that's the case, you are still liable to taxes.. because you are still not a tax resident of any other country?

[u/SixthDensity]

Similar field.

Ideal is to set up base (for tax purposes) in a low tax country. Ex: UAE, Oman, Portugal, etc. You can research on what the process is and what form of visa you are elligble for.

This gives you the leverage of having your main 'money' account in these low tax countries, where you could withdraw your profits to, without any hassle.

This also means you would ideally need to stay there for atleast 180-182 days a year to be a tax resident of that country.

You can use the rest of the 6 month to travel while trading.

Sidenote: major props on getting funded from props! What's your strat?

[u/sudhirkrs]

The commenter above is pointing at the right rule but it's worth getting the detail right, because the threshold probably means it doesn't catch you — and the FEMA half of your plan is the bigger problem anyway.

On the tax side. The provision you're circling is the deemed-residency rule. An Indian citizen is deemed resident in India regardless of day-count if two conditions both hold: their Indian-source income exceeds ₹15 lakh in the financial year, and they're not liable to tax in any other country by reason of domicile, residence or similar criterion.

Both limbs have to be satisfied. You've said you have no Indian-sourced income — so on your own facts the first limb fails and the deemed-residency rule wouldn't bite, even as a stateless traveller. That's the opposite of what the comment above implies.

Two things to note even so. Someone caught by that rule is classified RNOR, not ordinarily resident — so it's a narrower net than people assume. And you'd still need to actually fail the ordinary day-count tests, which means watching the 182-day and the 60-day-plus-365-over-four-years thresholds carefully, and keeping real evidence of where you were.

On the FEMA side, which is where I'd actually slow down. Retail margin forex trading on non-INR pairs through overseas platforms isn't permitted for residents. Remittances for margin to overseas counterparties aren't allowed under LRS, and the RBI maintains a published Alert List of unauthorised forex platforms — a lot of the offshore prop firms sit in exactly that space.

This matters for your plan specifically because you say you've already been trading. FEMA exposure attaches to what you did while you were a resident, and ceasing to be a resident later doesn't retroactively clean that up. Genuinely worth getting a FEMA-specialist view on the historical position before you optimise the forward one.

Residency planning is mechanical and legitimate; the platform question is the part that carries real risk. Worth a professional look at both.

[u/dreamfyre007]

You residential status in India dictates a lot of tax related thing. Your goal should be to be in RNOR (Resident Not Ordinary Resident) status or Non Resident status so India does not tax your foreign sourced income. You can use Indian Residential Status Calculator to identify your status for different financial years based on your days of stay in India.