India-US Cross-Border Tax Guides
The US rules that catch people out are rarely about how much tax you owe. They are about what you have to report — and the penalties attach to the reporting, not the tax. These guides cover the ones that matter if you moved from India.
FBAR and Indian Bank Accounts
Which Indian accounts are reportable on FinCEN Form 114 — savings, NRE, NRO, FCNR, fixed deposits, PPF, EPF, demat — how the $10,000 aggregate threshold really works, and why many F-1 students owe nothing at all.
- NRE and NRO treatment
- Signature authority
- FBAR vs Form 8938
- Never filed before
Indian Mutual Funds and the PFIC Problem
Your SIPs are almost certainly Passive Foreign Investment Companies. What that means, why the default regime is the punitive one, why the QEF election is usually closed to you, and how many Form 8621s you actually owe.
- Form 8621 per fund
- QEF vs mark-to-market
- ELSS and ETFs
- Held for years already
Form 8938 and FATCA Reporting
Filing an FBAR does not satisfy Form 8938, and neither form is a subset of the other. The thresholds, and exactly which Indian holdings each one catches — including the ones only Form 8938 reaches.
- The four thresholds
- Directly held shares
- Indian LLP interests
- Overlap with Form 8621
The India-US Tax Treaty
It does not stop the US taxing your Indian income — a saving clause preserves that. What the treaty really provides, why the foreign tax credit is the actual mechanism, and the one benefit that is unique to India.
- Article 21(2) for students
- What it does not cover
- Form 8833
- Dual residence
The Foreign Tax Credit and Form 1116
The mechanism that actually stops you being taxed twice — and it does not work evenly. NRE interest is fully taxable in the US with no credit at all, because India exempted it. Plus the April-March year mismatch nobody warns you about.
- The NRE trap
- Per-category limits
- Form 26AS timing
- Skipping Form 1116
Why these three, and in this order
They are the obligations most likely to apply to someone who moved from India and kept their financial life there — and the ones people are least likely to know exist. None of them depends on owing extra tax. You can be fully paid up and still have an incomplete return.
Start with the FBAR, because its threshold is the lowest by a wide margin: $10,000 across all your accounts combined, at any point in the year. If you kept a savings account in India, you are probably in scope.
Form 8938 comes next, because it overlaps the FBAR heavily but not completely, and because filing one does nothing for the other. Its thresholds are much higher, so plenty of people owe an FBAR and no 8938.
The PFIC rules are last but usually cost the most. If you hold Indian mutual funds, the default treatment is punitive and it applies unless you act — and the longer it runs, the worse the eventual bill.
Not sure which of these apply to you?
Send us a list of what you still hold in India. We will tell you which forms are due, which are not, and what to do about any year already filed without them.