Repatriating money from India to us

Q: I have a residential property in India which I plan to sell. After selling, I need to repatriate the money from India to US. If anyone has done this recently could you please ‘r’ me? I have questions about the Tax implications, repatriation process and probably need a CPA recommendation as well.

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You can repatriate up to $100K/year w/o any issues from the Indian taxation perspective. Not sure about US taxation.

I just maintain a regular (i.e. non-NRI) savings account with HDFC in India – I did a wire transfer from that account to my US account and made it as a gift to myself.

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Did this a couple of years ago. It was pretty easy then and from what I hear it’s gotten easier. The limit was up to $1million per year. All you needed (in India) was a Chartered Accountant’s certificate saying that the remittance was from the sale of property you acquired while working in India/inherited. You take this along with the required backing documents (copy of sale deed etc) to any bank where you have an NRO account (with the proceeds) and they will transfer it to your US account. There was no tax implication in the US.

Thanks for the response. I have few more questions if you don’t mind:

·         You mentioned “sale of property you acquired while working in India/inherited”. In my case I bought this property while working here by sending money from here. Do you know if that makes any difference?

Not sure. But if you acquired property from an NRE/FCNR account, the law allows you to sell and repatriate

·         When you sell the property in India, is there a PAN card required? I don’t have one.

I have one and file income taxes in India. My guess is that, you will, because part of the declaration that the Chartered Accountant makes is that you have no pending taxes in India.

·         From NRO account, can they transfer to any US account?

Yes, they even offered to give me a draft drawn on the bank’s US representative.

·         Did you have to report this in the US Tax Return in any way?

No, I did not have to.