Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Friday ordered the income tax department to make an exception for non resident Indians who are stuck in India due to the Covid-19 and suspension of international flights.
Crew members of the flight that got Indian nationals stranded in Singapore wear face shields due to the coronavirus disease (Covid-19) outbreak, in New Delhi, India, May 8, 2020. (REUTERS)
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Indians living abroad are not treated as a resident for tax purposes by the income tax department provided they spend less than 120 days in India.
But there were many NRIs who have had to extend their stay in India due to the Covid-19 lockdown, some have breached the 120-day limit and many others face the prospect of doing so over the next few days.
A finance ministry official said the minister had received many representations from people who have had to prolong their stay due to the suspension of international flights, worried that they would have to file tax returns as Indian residents. In order to help such people, the official said Sitharaman had allowed them to discount the extended stay to determine their residence status.
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The finance ministry said since it was not clear when the NRIs would be able to fly out, the Central Board of Direct Taxes had issued orders that this extended stay in India would not be counted to determine their residential status for the financial year 2020-21. The exact dates which shall be excluded shall be issued after international flights resume.
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The finance ministry said since it was not clear when the NRIs would be able to fly out, the Central Board of Direct Taxes had issued orders that this extended stay in India would not be counted to determine their residential status for the financial year 2020-21. The exact dates which shall be excluded shall be issued after international flights resume.
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The exception applies to individuals who came to India before 22 March and had been unable to leave the country on or before 31 March 2020. It will also benefit NRIs who had been quarantined in India after 1 March on account of Covid-19. This discounted calculation of dates shall be extended to NRIs whether they had left the country in an evacuation flight or were still in the country.
Shishir Gupta is Executive Editor at Hindustan Times and one of India's top journalists covering national security, strategic affairs, foreign policy and geopolitics. Over the past three decades, he has extensively reported on India's military, diplomatic and security landscape, covering every major conflict and national security challenge, from the 1999 Kargil War and the 2020 East Ladakh standoff to Operation Sindoor in 2025. He has also covered major terror attacks, including the IC-814 hijacking, the 26/11 Mumbai attacks and the 2025 Pahalgam terror strike, along with numerous Pakistan-backed terrorist incidents in the Kashmir Valley and across India. He has reported on national and state elections for more than three decades. A recognised authority on strategic affairs, Gupta has covered India's nuclear programme since the Pokhran-II (Shakti series) tests in May 1998 and has written extensively on global nuclear issues, Indian diplomacy and the country's expanding global outreach. He has also reported widely on international conflicts and terrorism, with a special focus on the Indian subcontinent. Gupta has interviewed Prime Minister Narendra Modi more than four times, including Modi's first interview with the print media after becoming Prime Minister in May 2014. His other interviews include three with the Dalai Lama, as well as conversations with Benjamin Netanyahu, Amit Shah, Yogi Adityanath, S. Jaishankar, Nirmala Sitharaman and Piyush Goyal. He is the author of Indian Mujahideen: The Enemy Within (Hachette, 2011) and Himalayan Face-off: Chinese Assertion and Indian Riposte (Hachette, 2014). He was awarded the Chevening-Wolfson Joint Scholarship at Wolfson College, University of Cambridge, UK, in 1998 and participated in the International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP) of the US State Department in 2006. He received the Ben Gurion Prize from Israel in 2011 and the K. Subrahmanyam Prize for Strategic Studies in 2015 from the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (MP-IDSA). Since 2024, he has hosted Point Blank, Hindustan Times' weekly YouTube show on global geopolitics.
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