How many days can you spend in India this year? Probably not the number in your head

The 182-day rule stopped being the whole story in 2020. The day-count ladder, the ₹15 lakh line, the zero-day rule, and what to check before a long India stay.

Ask an NRI how long they can stay in India before becoming a tax resident and the answer you’ll hear is 182 days. That answer has been incomplete since 2020: if you have real income in India, your limit can be 120 days, and in one specific case it is zero. This year is the right time to learn the correct rules, because India’s new Income-tax Act, 2025 came into force on April 1, 2026. The residency rules inside it are not new (they carry over the 2020 changes almost word for word), but the year running from April 2026 to March 2027 is the first one filed entirely under the new law, and most of us never updated the old number in our heads.

I’ll walk through the whole thing: what the three tax statuses mean, how many days you get, what reduces that number, and what to do about it. I have a personal reason to care. During COVID, what started as a short visit home stretched into months when international flights were grounded and borders closed. For the first time in my life I was counting my India days, watching the total move closer to the 182-day limit while the flights stayed suspended.

The three boxes, in plain words

Every year, India asks one question about you: for tax purposes, do you live here? Your days in India and your income decide the answer, and the answer puts you in one of three boxes. The official names are long and technical, so here is the simple meaning of each.

Non-resident (NR): India treats you as a person who lives abroad. This is where most of us in the Gulf are, and it is the best box to be in. India taxes only what you earn in India: rent from your flat back home, interest on your NRO account (the ordinary rupee account for money you earn in India), profit when you sell Indian shares or property. Your UAE salary is completely outside India’s tax net.

Resident but not ordinarily resident (RNOR): India treats you as a resident, but only for your India income. You crossed the day limit this year, but your recent history shows you live abroad, so the law is lenient with you. You have to file an Indian tax return, and your India income is taxed the way a resident’s would be. But your foreign salary and foreign investments stay out of India’s reach (one exception: income from a business you control from India, or a profession you set up in India). This box costs you paperwork, not your UAE income.

Resident and ordinarily resident (ROR): India treats you as a person who lives in India. India taxes everything you earn anywhere in the world, UAE salary included, and you must list every foreign bank account, property and investment in a schedule of your Indian tax return called Schedule FA. This is the box to stay out of.

The gap between NR and RNOR is mostly paperwork. The gap between RNOR and ROR is your entire UAE income. Everything that follows is about which box your days and your income put you in.

How many days you actually get

For an NRI who lives abroad and comes to India on visits, two numbers decide the box: 182 and 120. Which one applies to you depends on how much taxable income you have in India. The dividing line is ₹15 lakh (roughly $15,700, or AED 58,000), and the next section explains exactly what counts toward it.

Some counting rules first. A tax year runs April 1 to March 31, and every trip inside it adds up: three visits of 50 days each is 150 days, not three separate 50s. Count the day you land and the day you fly out as days in India; the law does not clearly say how to treat partial days, and counting both is the safe practice. The limits below assume you are an Indian citizen or a person of Indian origin (you, a parent, or a grandparent was born in undivided India) visiting India.

Now the full picture in one table. Find your income column first, then your days row:

Days in India (April to March)	India income ₹15 lakh or less	India income above ₹15 lakh
Up to 119 days	Non-resident	Non-resident
120 to 181 days	Non-resident	RNOR
182 days or more	Resident: RNOR or ROR, decided by your history	Resident: RNOR or ROR, decided by your history

In short: with India income of ₹15 lakh or less, your limit is 182 days; above ₹15 lakh, it drops to 120. Two notes on the table. The RNOR in the 120-to-181 row means the law is lenient even when you cross the limit: your UAE salary stays out of India’s net, and what you get is a filing obligation plus resident-style tax on your India income. And once you touch 182 days, no exception can save you, whatever you earn; only your history decides between RNOR and full ROR, explained in the overstay section below.

Three more details, so nothing surprises you. The 120-day limit applies only if you also spent a total of 365 days or more in India across the previous four tax years: if you visit family every year, you almost certainly have; if you genuinely haven’t, only the 182-day limit applies to you. If you have read about a 60-day rule somewhere, that is the law’s default limit for everyone else; for citizens and persons of Indian origin who come to India on a visit, it is relaxed to the 182 and 120 limits above. And the table assumes you pay income tax in some other country: if your India income is above ₹15 lakh and you pay income tax nowhere (which is the UAE situation), the zero-day rule below can make you RNOR whatever your day count.

What counts toward the ₹15 lakh

The law’s phrase is “total income other than income from foreign sources”. In plain words: your taxable income from India. For a typical UAE NRI that means:

Rent from Indian property, counted after the standard 30% deduction the law gives you on rent.
Interest on your NRO deposits and savings. Interest on NRE and FCNR deposits (the accounts for money you bring in from abroad) does not count: it is tax-exempt while you are a non-resident under the foreign-exchange rules, and exempt income is not part of total income.
Dividends from Indian shares and mutual funds.
Capital gains on Indian assets: shares, mutual funds, property.

The last one is the real problem, because it makes your limit change from year to year. Take a worked example. Say you rent out a flat for ₹75,000 a month: that is ₹9 lakh a year, ₹6.3 lakh after the 30% deduction. Add ₹2.1 lakh of NRO fixed-deposit interest and ₹60,000 of dividends and your taxable India income is about ₹9 lakh (roughly $9,400), comfortably under ₹15 lakh, so you can stay up to 181 days that year. Now suppose next year you sell the flat and make a ₹28 lakh capital gain. Your taxable India income jumps to about ₹31 lakh (roughly $32,500), and your safe limit for that same year quietly drops from 181 days to 119. Same person, same passport, two different limits. If you are planning both a property sale and a long India stay, keep them in different April-to-March years.

The zero-day rule

There is one rule that can make you a tax resident without spending even one day in India, and it is written for people exactly like us. An Indian citizen whose taxable India income exceeds ₹15 lakh, and who is “not liable to tax” in any other country because of where he lives, is treated as a resident of India for that year (the law calls this “deemed residency”). The UAE has no personal income tax, so a salaried NRI here with, say, ₹20 lakh of rent and interest in India fits the description exactly. (It applies to Indian citizens only; if you have taken another passport, this rule is not about you.)

Before you panic: the rule is softer than the 2020 headlines suggested. A deemed resident always falls under RNOR, never ROR, so your UAE salary and UAE investments stay out of India’s reach. When the rule arrived in the 2020 budget and Gulf media read it as a tax on expat salaries, the Finance Ministry issued a written clarification within the week: a genuine worker abroad who gets deemed resident will not have his foreign earnings taxed by India unless they come from an Indian business or profession. What the rule really costs you is a filing obligation and resident-style treatment of your India income.

Two more things work in your favour. The rule applies only if the day count did not already make you a resident. And the India–UAE tax treaty gives one more layer of protection: spend at least 183 days in the UAE in the calendar year and you qualify as a UAE resident under the treaty, whose tie-breaker rules (your permanent home first, then where your family and life actually are) will usually assign you to the UAE. Get a UAE Tax Residency Certificate for the year: that is the document that makes treaty protection real if a tax notice ever arrives.

So the zero-day rule is not the horror story it sounded like in 2020. But if your India income is above ₹15 lakh, staying away from India no longer keeps you out of the Indian tax system by itself. Either way, a tax return is now expected of you.

One long stay usually won’t hurt you

Suppose the worst happens: a parent’s illness keeps you in India for 200 days. You are a resident that year, no exception. But resident does not automatically mean ROR, because the RNOR box exists exactly for people whose recent history shows they live abroad. You fall under RNOR if either of these is true: you were a non-resident in at least 9 of the previous 10 tax years, or you spent a total of 729 days or less in India across the previous 7 tax years. A long-term Gulf NRI who overstays once passes the first test easily. India taxes only your India income that year; your UAE income stays safe.

The danger is doing it again and again. Spend 182-plus days in India year after year and these history tests start failing. At that point you are ROR, your UAE income is taxable in India, and every foreign account you hold must be reported in Schedule FA, where skipping the disclosure carries penalties under India’s black-money law.

Your NRE account follows a different law

One thing the day limits above do not decide: your bank accounts. NRE and FCNR accounts are governed by FEMA, the foreign-exchange law, which has its own definition of resident: more than 182 days in the preceding financial year plus your intention, and intention matters more than the count. Overstay one year on family visits and you are still a person resident outside India under FEMA: your NRE account, and its tax-free interest, survive. But the day you move back permanently (job in India, family relocated, no return ticket) you become a FEMA resident immediately, whatever your day count says, and the accounts must be redesignated, meaning converted into ordinary resident accounts. For your bank, what matters is your intention, not your day count.

What I’d actually do

Count your days now, not in March. April 1, 2026 started the current tax year. Add up every India day since then, count arrival and departure days, and keep the proof: passport stamps and tickets are your evidence if the tax department ever asks.
Know your India income number. Add taxable rent, NRO interest, dividends and any capital gains you expect this year. Under ₹15 lakh, your limit is 181 days. Over it, treat the limit as 119.
Keep big India-income events and long stays in separate years. A property sale or a large mutual-fund redemption can cut your allowance by two months, even for days you already spent. The year is judged as a whole.
If you will cross a limit anyway, know which box you fall into. One resident year after a long NRI history = RNOR; your UAE income is safe, but you file in India.
If your India income crosses ₹15 lakh, get a UAE Tax Residency Certificate for the year (183 days in the UAE in the calendar year qualifies you) so treaty protection is ready if you ever need it.
Keep the FEMA question separate. Long visits do not touch your NRE account; moving back permanently does. Redesignate then, not before.

The 182-day rule still exists. It just stopped being the whole story six years ago. Check your income first, then your calendar, before you book the long trip.

The ₹-to-$ conversions above use the exchange rate of mid-July 2026 and move with it; the ₹15 lakh threshold and day counts are set by law and current as of publication. Confirm the rupee figures against the live rate on the day you read this.