I left India in June for a job abroad and came back for two months in the winter. My day count comes to somewhere between 119 and 122. Am I resident for the year, and what does that pull into the Indian return?
The client is an Indian citizen, 34, a software architect. He worked for a Pune employer until 6 June 2024, resigned, flew out on 6 June 2024 and joined a Singapore employer on 17 June 2024 on a two-year contract. He came back to India on 28 December 2024 when his father was operated on, and left again on 20 February 2025; he worked remotely for the Singapore employer on 38 of those days and took the rest as leave. The year is previous year 2024-25, assessment year 2025-26, and the return has not been filed. Counting both boundary days on every leg, the passport gives 122 days in India - 67 days from 1 April to 6 June, and 55 days from 28 December to 20 February. Excluding the day of arrival on the December leg it is 121. Excluding both the day of arrival and the day of departure on each leg it is 119. He lived in India throughout the four preceding years. His Indian income for the year is salary of Rs 9.4 lakh to 6 June including leave encashment, gross rent of Rs 3.6 lakh on a let flat in Kharadi, bank interest and dividend of Rs 1.9 lakh, and a long-term gain of Rs 4.7 lakh on listed shares sold on 12 March 2025. His Singapore salary from 17 June 2024 to 31 March 2025 is SGD 1,86,000, about Rs 1.17 crore at the rates he has used, credited to a Singapore bank account, with nothing remitted to India; Singapore tax of SGD 21,400 has been assessed and paid there. He holds a certificate of residence from the Singapore authority for calendar year 2024. What is missing from the file: the arrival stamp for 28 December 2024 is illegible and no extract of the immigration record has been obtained; there is nothing from the Singapore employer allocating the salary between days worked in Singapore and the 38 days worked from Pune; there is no residence certificate covering January to March 2025; Form 67 has not been filed; and the day counts for the four preceding years are asserted from memory with no travel table behind them.
Do not run the calculator first. Fix which threshold the count is being measured against before you count anything, because on these figures the arithmetic is not what decides the year - the choice of threshold is. If the extended period for a citizen who leaves India for employment governs, every one of his three figures is comfortably below it and he is a non-resident whichever convention he uses. If instead the visitor limb governs, the threshold drops to a figure his count straddles, and then the treatment of the arrival and departure days decides the status by two days. A computation that produces 119 and stops has answered a question nobody has yet identified. Settle the threshold, then count, then write the count down in a dated schedule with the convention stated on its face, because that schedule is the only document that will still be legible when the officer asks about this year in 2028.
Residence is a question of fact and the burden of establishing it sits on the person asserting non-residence, so the count has to be provable and not merely asserted. The library holds a Tribunal decision in which the officer computed the days from the border agency's own entry and exit data in preference to the stamps in the passport, on the footing that the agency is mandated to keep that data on a real-time basis and, being a Central Government agency, its data cannot be doubted; the same decision holds that the person must prove by demonstrative evidence that his case falls outside the residence provision, and that having a genuine overseas business and travelling for it does not by itself put him outside the Indian charge. That decision is a Tribunal order and so persuasive rather than binding, and the corpus records that no High Court has passed on the point. It still tells you what the file needs. Here the December arrival stamp is illegible, which means the client's own figure rests on a document that does not prove it; get the immigration extract before filing, not after a notice. The library's note on counting the days and its note on residential status both record that passport stamps, boarding passes and immigration records are the primary evidence, and that status is determined afresh for each year.
This is where the three figures come from, and the honest position is that only one half of the convention has any support. The corpus holds a Tribunal order holding that in counting days of stay for the resident tests the day of arrival has to be excluded, reached by adopting an earlier Bench's reasoning that where a period is computed using the word 'from' the first day of the series drops out; on those facts the department's figure fell below the statutory line once the arrival days came out. The corpus is equally clear about that order's weaknesses: it adds no reasoning of its own, it decides only the arrival limb and assumes without deciding that the departure day counts, and contrary authority is set out on the face of the order and never answered. That contrary authority is also in the library - an advance ruling holding that the days on which the person entered India and the days on which he left both have to be taken into account, because on such a date he was in India even if only for part of it, and rejecting an hours-based computation as impractical. It is a ruling binding only on the applicant and the Commissioner in that case, and it is recorded as unverified, but it is the only reasoned decision the library holds that addresses the departure day and the part-day at all. So 121 is the defensible figure, 119 requires a proposition nothing in this library supports, and 122 is what the officer will start from. The library's note on counting the days records in terms that no High Court has ruled on either half.
Every client in this position wants the days spent at a parent's bedside taken out, and there is exactly one route in the library and it does not reach these facts. The corpus holds a High Court decision excluding a period of stay that was involuntary, where the passport had been impounded by executive action that the Tribunal had found unjustified and illegal and that finding was not challenged; the test the Court put was one of animus - there has to be something to show that the individual intended, or had the animus of, residing in India for the minimum prescribed duration. The Court then confined its own decision in terms, saying it was not laying down a thumb rule and that each case turns on its facts, and the corpus records the decision as unverified, with the two Tribunal orders that cite it doing so only for a general canon of construction and deciding against the party citing it. A stay that was distressing but chosen is not a stay without volition. The second half of the answer is departmental and it is worse: the library holds the Board's response to the pandemic year, in which it declined to give a general relaxation of the day count and reasoned that it would first need information about who was actually facing double taxation. An argument that asks for days to be discounted on circumstance rather than under a provision will be met with that refusal, and running it costs the credibility of the arithmetic that follows.
The library's note on residential status records the two basic tests as 182 days or more in the year, or 60 days or more in the year combined with 365 days or more across the four preceding years, and records that the second test is relaxed in three situations. On the note's account, a citizen who leaves India in the year for the purposes of employment outside India reads 182 days for 60; a citizen or person of Indian origin who is outside India and comes on a visit also reads 182 for 60, but only where his income other than income from foreign sources is Rs 15 lakh or less, and where it exceeds that figure the substituted figure is 120 days. This client is on both descriptions in the same year: he left for employment in June and he came back in December on what looks like a visit. Nothing in this library decides which limb governs that overlap, and the answer is worth the entire foreign salary. What the library does hold on the first limb is strong - a Tribunal order holding that the expression describes the purpose of the departure, that no technical meaning attaches to employment, and that leaving to take up business or a profession abroad is within it, so an officer cannot defeat the extended period by pointing at a visa class; the corpus records that order as good law, followed by two later Benches, but also records that it decides the residence test only. On the second limb the corpus holds a High Court decision declining to interfere with a concurrent finding that, excluding the time during which the person was visiting India, he was not in India for the requisite days - which is the shape of the argument here, though the corpus is careful to say the judgment approves the exclusion of a visit period from the shorter count and does not construe the visitor provision at all. The corpus also records, in a caution attached to that judgment, a later Bench holding that the visitor limb applies only to a person who is already non-resident and that the employment limb applies only in the year the citizen actually leaves. That order is not in this library and could not be read; it is the point the officer will run, and it should be met, not ignored.
The figure is almost always got wrong by adding the foreign salary in and treating the gate as obviously crossed, which here would put Rs 1.35 crore on the wrong side of a test the foreign salary plays no part in. The library's note on the threshold sets out the statutory definition it works from: income from foreign sources is income which accrues or arises outside India, except income derived from a business controlled in or a profession set up in India, and which is not deemed to accrue or arise in India. Work in that order and the Singapore salary for services rendered in Singapore comes out, and what is left is the Indian salary of Rs 9.4 lakh, the net rent, the interest and dividend of Rs 1.9 lakh and the listed-share gain of Rs 4.7 lakh - about Rs 18.5 lakh on his own figures, which is over the Rs 15 lakh line the note states. So the visitor limb, if it applies at all, applies at the shorter 120-day figure, and the whole year turns on the two days argued about in the step above. The same computation answers the deeming provision, which uses the identical expression: the library records that provision as requiring an Indian citizen with income other than income from foreign sources above that figure who is not liable to tax in any other country by reason of domicile, residence or a similar criterion, and this client pays real tax in Singapore, so on the face of it the condition is not met. Two honest limits. The corpus records that the definitions here were taken from the department's own page rather than from the notified Act and should be checked before being quoted. And it records that no decided case applying the deeming provision, and none testing the 'not liable to tax' condition, could be located on any host.
This is the step the calculator does not do, and it is where the answer actually turns into a return. The library's note on the scope of the charge is built on the point that residence and the charge are two separate questions: a non-resident is taxed only on income received or deemed received in India and income accruing or deemed to accrue in India, while a resident is taxed on foreign accruals as well, unless he is not ordinarily resident, in which case a proviso keeps foreign-accruing income out unless it is derived from a business controlled in or a profession set up in India. On the note's account of the not-ordinarily-resident tests - non-resident in nine of the ten preceding years, or in India for 729 days or less in the seven preceding years - this client fails both, having lived in India throughout, so if the visitor limb makes him resident it is only the class provision attaching to that limb that saves him, which is precisely why the correct limb has to be identified before this step is attempted. Two things then follow whichever way the status goes. First, the money being paid into a Singapore account is not the answer to anything and should not be pleaded as though it were. The library holds a High Court decision that salary which became due and accrued to a non-resident for services rendered outside India does not become chargeable on a receipt basis merely because the foreign employer paid it into an Indian account - income accrues where the services are rendered - and a Board circular saying the same thing for one class of worker in terms that bind the officer. That reasoning helps here in reverse: it establishes that the place of the bank is irrelevant, which means an officer cannot be answered by saying the money never came to India either. Second, and this is the exposure nobody computes, the 38 days worked from Pune. The library holds a Supreme Court decision on the neighbouring deeming provision holding that only salary payable for service rendered in India is deemed earned in India, and that because that provision is itself a statutory fiction no further fiction may be built on it by extending it to whatever has a possible nexus with Indian service. Read straightforwardly, that cuts both ways: the salary for the months in Singapore is not deemed to accrue here, and the salary referable to days actually worked in Pune is. Get a letter from the employer allocating the salary before the officer allocates it for you.
Clients arrive with the certificate and believe it settles the year. It does not touch the domestic count at all. The library's note on the certificate sets out the scheme: the statute makes a certificate of residence obtained from the other government a condition of claiming relief under an agreement, and prescribes further particulars to be furnished where the certificate itself does not carry them. What the certificate establishes is contested, and the corpus holds three decisions that do not sit together. A High Court decision describes a valid certificate as statutorily the only evidence required and holds that the Indian authorities cannot go behind one issued by another State - but the corpus records that its operation has been stayed and leave granted against it, so it cannot be presented as settled. A Supreme Court decision holds that the certificate is a necessary eligibility requirement and not sufficient or conclusive evidence of residence or entitlement, and that the authorities may examine substance. The practical reading the note gives is that the certificate is indispensable and shifts the burden, and that the department can still displace it, but only with material. Add to that the Tribunal decision already used above, in which a certificate from the other State did not displace a domestic computation that showed a stay over the statutory line - which is exactly the objection this client's certificate will meet. Two file problems here and both are fixable now: the certificate is for the other State's calendar year and the Indian previous year runs to 31 March, so there is nothing covering January to March 2025, and the corpus records that whether a certificate covering only part of the period is enough is unanswered by anything it holds.
The library's note on split years starts from the honest position: the Act fixes status once for the whole previous year and there is no clause that apportions it, so a person who is resident is resident for every day including the days after he left. The route that does exist runs through the agreement - residence of the other State under that State's own law for the period, the certificate, then the tie-breaker, then the allocation articles - and the note records that sequence as a fixed order in which each limb is reached only if the one before it does not decide the question. The library holds three orders that run it. One allocated a period away from India on the closer personal and economic relations limb, and the corpus is blunt that it is thinner authority than it looks, having been decided on other grounds with the tie-breaker performed below, and that the next Bench shown it confined it to its own facts. A second, run on the same agreement as this client's, held that a questionnaire is an important aid but cannot be the exclusive basis for the conclusion, that permanence of a home is judged qualitatively as well as by duration so that a rented flat abroad can be a permanent home, and that a person who moved with his family to earn abroad had his personal and economic relations there for that period. A third went the other way, weighing the immediate family more heavily than the extended family and treating active engagement in a business as real economic connection while passive holdings show only where money is placed - and the corpus records that these two lines are squarely opposed on whether the tie-breaker may be applied to part of a year, that neither has noticed the other, and that no High Court or Supreme Court decision on the point was located. Establish which line the officer is on before framing anything. The library's worked note on one Gulf agreement is written on a different treaty and its article numbering must be checked, but its ordering point applies generally and is the one most often missed: the employment article allows the State where the work is done to tax and leaves the State of residence taxing as well, so it is not an answer to an Indian residence finding and running it first tells the officer the earlier steps have been given up. Then price the outcomes. If he is resident and ordinarily resident, the Rs 1.17 crore comes in and the Singapore tax of SGD 21,400 is creditable, but the library's note on the credit records that it is allowed in the year the income is offered in India, computed separately for each country and source, capped at the lower of the two taxes, and claimed through Form 67 - which has not been filed, and although the note records a line of Tribunal decisions holding that deadline directory rather than mandatory, that is a defence and not a plan. If he is resident on any footing, the foreign-asset schedule and the flat penalty behind it come into view: the library records that penalty as attaching to a resident other than a not-ordinarily-resident, as a flat amount for each year of default, as discretionary rather than automatic on a Special Bench answer, and as excluded below a raised value threshold for defaults from October 2024 - and it records that whether the schedule is excluded for a not-ordinarily-resident in a particular year's form must be checked against that year's form rather than assumed.
Most of these files are decided before the arithmetic, by which threshold the count is measured against, and that is the question this library cannot answer. If the extended period for a citizen who leaves for employment governs the year of departure, this client is a non-resident on all three of his figures, the Singapore salary for services rendered in Singapore stays out, and the only live item is the salary referable to the 38 days worked from Pune - which is a small addition made almost inevitable by the absence of an employer allocation, and which is what a careful officer will pick up from the remote-working dates. If the visitor limb governs instead, the shorter threshold applies because his Indian income is over the stated figure, his count straddles it, and the year is decided by whether the day of departure comes out - a point on which the only reasoned material in this library goes against him and no court above the Tribunal has spoken. On that footing he is resident, and because he lived in India throughout the preceding years the middle status is not available to him unless the class provision attached to that very limb supplies it, so the whole Singapore salary comes into the charge with credit for the Singapore tax. The realistic advice is to file as a non-resident on the departure-year limb with the schedule, the immigration extract and the employer allocation on the file from the start, to obtain the missing certificate for the closing quarter now rather than at the hearing, and to tell the client in writing that the outcome depends on a question of construction that no decision in this library resolves.
