How to Transfer Money from an NRO Account to the USA in 2026

If you live in the US and still have an NRO account in India, the money in it probably came from rent on a flat back home, interest on an old fixed deposit, dividends, shares or a property you sold, or money a parent left you. Sooner or later you’ll want some of it in your US bank account.

You can send it, and how much you can send depends on what the money is. Income like rent and interest can go in full once the tax on it is paid, while sale proceeds, inheritances and older savings share a yearly limit. Either way, your bank releases the money only after it has seen where it came from and that the tax is settled, so most of the work is getting those papers together before you ask.

Sending money from an NRO account to a US bank account: what’s allowed

An NRO (Non-Resident Ordinary) account holds money you earned in India, so it can leave the country once the tax on it is settled. An NRE account works differently: it holds money you brought in from abroad, which is why it can go back out without any forms.

Whichever of the first two rows your money falls into decides how much you can send and what your bank will ask for, so that’s the place to start.

Income or capital: the USD 1 million NRO repatriation limit

Banks sort NRO money into two kinds. Income is what your money earns: rent, interest, dividends and pension. Capital is the money itself: proceeds from selling property, shares or mutual funds, an inheritance, gifts from relatives and older savings sitting in the account.

Income has no yearly cap. Once the tax on it is paid, you can send all of it to the US.

Capital is where the limit comes in. You can send up to USD 1 million of it in each Indian financial year, which runs from 1 April to 31 March, and the limit is per person. Moving money from your NRO account to your own NRE account uses up the same limit, even though the money never leaves India. And because the cap is in dollars, the rupee amount it covers moves with the exchange rate.

If you’re selling a large property, the yearly reset helps. Proceeds above USD 1 million can go out in two parts, one before 31 March and one after 1 April, so you use two years’ limits.

What you need to show, and the tax that should already have come out, depends on where the money came from.

TDS here is tax deducted at source: tax the payer takes out before the money reaches you and deposits against your PAN.

Rental income from property in India

Your tenant is supposed to deduct TDS at 30% plus surcharge and cess before paying you rent. Many don’t, often because deducting tax for an NRI landlord needs a TAN, a tax deduction number most individuals have never applied for. If yours hasn’t deducted it, you’ll need to pay the tax yourself before your bank or CA will sign off. Your bank will ask for the rent agreement and the TDS certificates, so keep both.

Property sale proceeds

When you sell, the buyer deducts TDS, and unless you arrange otherwise, it’s calculated on the whole sale price, even though you only owe tax on the gain. That can lock up a large part of the money until your Indian tax refund comes through. If you apply for a lower TDS certificate before you sell, the buyer deducts at the lower rate on the certificate, which the tax officer works out from your expected gain.

If you bought the property with money sent from abroad or paid from your NRE account, the part you paid in foreign currency can usually go back outside the USD 1 million limit. Our guide to repatriating property sale proceeds explains how.

Share and mutual fund sale proceeds

Your broker or fund house deducts tax on the gains when you sell, so by the time the money reaches your NRO account, the tax is usually done. Your bank will want the contract notes or the capital gains statement to show the money came from a sale.

Interest and dividends

Your bank deducts TDS on NRO interest at 30% plus surcharge and cess, and companies deduct 20% plus surcharge and cess on dividends. If you’re a US tax resident, the India-US tax treaty allows lower rates on both. Your bank will apply them only if you give it a US tax residency certificate (IRS Form 6166) and the treaty declaration it asks for; otherwise it deducts the full rate and you claim the difference back in your Indian tax return. Our guide to NRO account tax rules has the full rates.

Inherited money

India has no inheritance tax, so money you inherit isn’t taxed when it comes to you. Any interest or rent it earns afterwards is taxed like other NRO income. To send it abroad, your bank will ask for the will or a succession certificate and the death certificate.

Cash you deposited

If you deposited cash into your NRO account, expect trouble sending it abroad, because the bank can’t trace where it came from. Some banks, ICICI Bank among them, won’t accept it as a source at all.

Forms 145 and 146 (formerly 15CA and 15CB) and what your bank adds

Once you know what kind of money you’re sending, the tax forms follow from it. From April 2026, under the Income-tax Act 2025, Form 15CA became Form 145 and Form 15CB became Form 146. Only the names and numbers changed; you file them the same way.

Form 145 is your own declaration to the Income Tax Department about the transfer, which you file on the income tax e-filing portal. Form 146 is a chartered accountant’s (CA’s) certificate that the right tax has been paid. Whether the money is taxable in India and how much you’ve sent this year decide which part of Form 145 you fill, and the same answer tells you whether you need a CA at all.

The ₹5 lakh counts everything you’ve sent in the financial year, so three transfers of ₹2 lakh take you over it on the third.

On top of the tax forms, most banks ask for Form A2, their application for sending money abroad, and a signed letter stating the purpose of the transfer. Some also want a CA certificate on every NRO transfer, whatever the table above says. That’s your bank’s own rule, and it’s the one that decides whether your request goes through, which is why the steps below start with the bank’s checklist.

Transferring from NRO to your US bank account, step by step

The transfer runs through the bank that holds your NRO account, because the bank has to check the tax and the source of the money before it sends anything abroad. Most steps are yours, one may belong to your CA, and the last one is the bank’s.

1. Get your bank’s checklist (you). Ask what it needs for your kind of money. Some banks ask for more than the law does, so you want the full list before you pay a CA for anything.

2. Settle any tax still owed (you). Check that TDS was deducted on the money you’re sending. If it wasn’t, as often happens with rent, pay the tax first.

3. Get Form 146 from a CA, if you need one (your CA). Your CA checks the tax position and files Form 146 online.

4. File Form 145 (you or your CA). Log in to the income tax portal with your PAN and fill in the part that matches your situation. If you’re filing Part C, you need the acknowledgement number from the CA’s Form 146 first, which is why this step comes after it. Download the filed form for your bank.

5. Get your US bank’s details for receiving an international wire (you). Your US bank publishes its own instructions, usually a SWIFT code and sometimes an intermediary bank, and your Indian bank needs these exactly as given.

6. Send the request to your Indian bank (you). ICICI Bank customers can do this online through Money2World, and HDFC Bank has an online request for NRO remittances. You upload Forms 145 and 146, your proof of income and the US wire details. If your bank wants signed originals at the branch instead, we can courier them to India for you.

7. The bank checks, converts and wires the money (your bank). Once it’s satisfied, the bank converts your rupees to dollars and sends them to your US account. Keep the forms, TDS certificates and the bank’s advice: you’ll need them for your Indian tax return, and they answer any question your US bank or the IRS asks later about where the money came from.

Transfer time, bank charges and the exchange rate

Most of the wait is your bank reviewing your documents, so a complete file is the fastest way to get the money moving. Once the bank approves the request, the wire itself is the quick part. If anything is missing, the bank holds the request, and some cancel it if you don’t complete it in time; ICICI Bank allows 15 days.

You pay in four places:

• Your Indian bank’s fee. ICICI Bank, for example, charges ₹1,000 plus GST to send dollars to a US account.

• GST on the currency conversion, charged separately.

• Intermediary banks that pass the wire along, which can take a fee on the way, so slightly less may arrive than you sent.

• Your US bank, since many charge for receiving an international wire.

On a large transfer, the exchange rate costs more than all of these together. Your bank converts at its own rate, which sits below the mid-market rate you see on Google. If the rate is around ₹88 to the dollar, converting ₹50 lakh at a rate just 50 paise worse costs you about ₹28,000, against a bank fee of around ₹1,200. Compare the rate your bank quotes with the mid-market rate before you confirm, and ask whether it will hold that rate while it reviews your documents.

Send it to the US now or move it to your NRE account first

Send it straight to your US bank if you need the dollars now. Move it to your NRE account first if you’d rather keep it in India and send it later without another round of forms. Both routes take the same tax paperwork, but anything you move into NRE counts towards your USD 1 million, while income sent straight abroad doesn’t.

Moving money to NRE also keeps your options open for investing. Anything you invest from your NRE account stays repatriable, so gains on shares bought through it can come back to the US freely. We can set up an NRI demat account linked to your NRE account from your phone.

The same logic applies to money going the other way. You can send money from the US into your NRO account, or move it from NRE to NRO, with no forms or limit. Once it’s there, though, it follows NRO rules and needs the paperwork above to come back out. If you’re sending savings to India that you may want back, an NRE account is the better place for them.

Using NRO money within India: savings accounts, family and cash withdrawals

Inside India, your NRO account works much like any rupee account. You can pay bills, invest, and send money to a parent’s or sibling’s savings account as an ordinary bank transfer, with no forms and no cap. Gifts to close relatives aren’t taxed in their hands.

If you mean your own old savings account, it should have become an NRO account when you moved abroad. Under FEMA, the rules on foreign exchange, telling the bank is your job, so if it’s still a resident account, ask your bank to redesignate it.

To withdraw cash, use your NRO debit card at an ATM in India or withdraw at a branch. Whether the card also works outside India depends on your bank.

Once the money lands: FBAR, Form 8938 and US tax credits

Moving your own savings to the US isn’t income, so the IRS doesn’t tax the transfer itself. It taxes what the money earned in India and expects you to report the accounts that hold it.

If you’re a US tax resident, your Indian interest, rent and gains are taxable in the US every year, whether or not you bring the money over. You can usually claim the tax already deducted in India as a credit on Form 1116. Because India’s tax year runs April to March and the US year runs January to December, you’ll need to split that TDS across two US returns.

Your Indian accounts also need reporting:

• FBAR (FinCEN Form 114) if your foreign accounts together crossed USD 10,000 at any point in the calendar year. It’s due on 15 April, with an automatic extension to 15 October.

• Form 8938 if you’re single, living in the US, and your foreign financial assets were over USD 50,000 at year end or USD 75,000 at any time in the year. The thresholds are higher for joint filers.

• Form 3520 if you received more than USD 100,000 in gifts or inheritance from someone who isn’t a US person in a year. It’s an information return, and no US tax is due on the inheritance itself.

NRO account transfers: questions NRIs ask

Can someone in India make the transfer for me?

Partly. A family member holding your power of attorney can make rupee payments from your NRO account and send your income, after tax, to you abroad. They can’t send money abroad to anyone other than you, make gifts to residents on your behalf, or move money into another NRO account. Banks have their own rules for a power of attorney signed outside India, so check what yours accepts. Our digital notarisation is built for Indian bank requirements and is done over a video call.

Does this work the same if my account is in the UK or UAE?

On the Indian side, yes: the limit, the forms and the bank’s process are the same whichever country you’re sending to. What changes is the reporting and tax once the money lands, which depends on where you live.

Can I convert my NRO account to a resident account when I move back?

Yes. Tell your bank you’ve returned, and it will redesignate the NRO account as a regular resident account. Money you want to keep in foreign currency can go into a Resident Foreign Currency (RFC) account instead; our guide to RFC accounts for returning NRIs explains how it works.