Moving Back to India

This post is supposed to act as a guide of the steps that one should take in order to start wrapping up their life in Foreign countries, the post is US specific since most of our members are based here but we will start including as we get other countries.

PSA : Even if you dont have a plan to move back to India, please feel free to use concepts here to maximise your $$ earnings. We would love to contribute to your personal wealth growth by adopting best practices & knowing how/where you can do couple of tweaks, which will result in $$’s being added to your accounts while working as a Non-citizen.

Moving Soon Checklist

Personal Belongings
Sell everything on Facebook with Moveout Sale/Estate Sale
Hack – The lower you price your items the faster they will sell which is great, assuming you already have a lot of things going on. If you have a lot of stuff there are Estate sale firms as well which will handle complete sales of your stuff.

Relocation Firms
Universal Relocations- have good experience with them
Hack– Its ok if you are moving to south india with sensitive stuff like TV’s, but since all relocation firms do container shipping, the closer your final delivery address is to port(Chennai, Mumbai) the safer your stuff will be.

Financial Assets Allocation Plan & $$ Saving Hacks :-

USA Banking – Chase, BOFA (TBC)

Chase – People even got Chase debit cards delivered in India, god damn 🙂 !

India Banking – HDFC, ICICI

NRE Account – Send Foreign Earned Income. Zero hassels & no tax implications in India.
NRO Account – A simple rule Income originated from India will be taxed in India- interest, capital gains, rent, etc And for the above an Indian savings account is used which is NRO.

Hack – Use NRE account for doing transfers.Explanation – Income originated abroad is taxed abroad and not in India. NRE is used to bring in money from abroad and since it’s already taxed in your residence country it won’t be taxed again in NRE.

Finances– Fidelity, Schwab (TBC)

Stocks – Fidelity, Robinhood, Etrade

Restrictions :- US stocks and ETF allowed, Mutual Funds are not allowed as Non Citizen.

₿ Crypto – Physical Crypto asset, Fidelity

HSA – Fidelity

Hack – You can essentially invest every $ in your HSA if you rollover the funds to Fidelity HSA. (TBC), even if you are not moving back I suggest this hack.

401k – Fidelity

Hack – Please contribute however much your company matches (typically 1-6% of your salary).The non-obvious/hidden part is if you invest $1 company gives you $1. So you get 100% return on investment till your company match %.

Roth – Fidelity

Hack – Please, please, please invest in roth if you plan to work in USA for 3 years or more & let compounding do its magic. Thank us later./

USA Home / Property –

You can either choose to hold or sell with housing demand always way more than Supply for at least 10 years. Its not a bad option to maintain a property, but comes with its own headaches like maintainence & not being able to see your house for a long time.
1. Renting – Zillow Rental Manager (Self Managed Rental)
2. Selling ($500,000 profit Tax-free) –
If you’re a single tax filer and you sell your primary home, you can exclude up to a $250,000 gain. If you’re married and filing jointly, you can exclude up to a $500,000 gain in the sale of your primary home.
Caveats– You should have lived in the house for 2 years(total time) in the past 5 years. Incase you did rent it out and could not fulfill 2 year clause due to job location change ,this rule still applies. This rule can be used once every 2 years.

Taxes– Please pay taxes on all earned income in foreign country and whichever country needed

Social Security Benefit for Non Citizens (Work visa h1b , L1 etc holders) can be used after age 62. Apparently indian / non US citizens do qualify for Social security benifits if they can score 40 points. Our interpretation(to be confirmed) is that is if both spouses have worked for 5 years on work visa like h1, they might score 40 points. 4 point is given for every year’s worth of work in USA.

Official Us gov doc : https://www.ssa.gov/pubs/EN-05-11051.pdf Link to relevant posts : https://www.ssa.gov/ssi/spotlights/spot-non-citizens.htm https://www.reddit.com/r/SocialSecurity/comments/14uxkst/immigrant_who_left_the_us_but_paid_into_social/https://www.reddit.com/r/immigration/comments/19c5i26/ss_benefits_for_non_citizens/

Tax-advantaged ways Transfer money from USA to India:-

To reduced tax impact : https://www.thegalacticadvisors.com/post/returning-from-usa-reset-your-cost-basis**(TBC) -** After moving to India and without GC, there is a period of time where India won’t tax you on capital gains on your US stock sells due to RNOR status. US won’t tax you since you are not a resident anymore and don’t have a GC either.
Physical Crypto Wallet (TBC) – Please pay taxes when you sell and declare your crypto assets to whichever country you buy your crypto in. This gives you the ability to move with your assets.
GIFT City – info to be added.

Tips:-Risk Diversification- Would suggest to split investments in the economy where you are in right now & India

Address- Make sure you have a trustworthy friend or relative you can rely on that can serve as your intermediary if needed or buy out a physical mailbox with USPS etc.

PS: This is not legal advice so take it with a pinch of salt.

If you have any questions, please comment below and we will try to resolve it ASAP !

Terms:- TBC – To be confirmed.