The NRI Tax Calendar for 2026: Every Date That Costs You Money If You Miss It

A reader in Dubai called me in late March, mildly panicked. He had a Rs 22 lakh capital gain from selling Indian equity in February, his treaty paperwork from the previous year had quietly lapsed on 31 March, the fund house had deducted TDS he could have avoided, and he had no idea that a fourth advance-tax instalment had come and gone on 15 March. None of it was complicated. All of it was a calendar problem. He had treated Indian tax as a once-a-year July event when it is really a set of fixed dates spread across twelve months, and the ones that cost the most are the ones nobody reminds an NRI about.

The 30-second answer: For AY 2026-27, the dates an NRI must hold are: advance tax on 15 June, 15 September, 15 December 2025 and 15 March 2026 (15%, 45%, 75%, 100% cumulative) if your tax after TDS exceeds Rs 10,000; the ITR deadline of 31 July 2026 for ITR-1 and ITR-2, with belated filing to 31 December 2026 and revision to 31 March 2027; the TDS quarter close on 31 May 2026 (Q4), after which Form 26AS and AIS update and refunds become claimable; Form 10F and your TRC renewed every financial year before treaty income arises; and the USD 1 million repatriation window that resets on 1 April. Miss advance tax and Section 234B charges 1% a month.

This guide assumes you already know the basics of how NRO interest, rent and capital gains are taxed and how DTAA relief works; if not, start with advance tax for NRIs and DTAA mechanics. What follows is the part that is purely about timing: which dates actually apply to a non-resident, why some of them gate your refund or your treaty relief, and a month-by-month checklist you can run against your own situation.

The one calendar table to keep

Here is the full year on one page. Everything else in this guide explains who each row applies to and what goes wrong if you miss it. The financial year runs 1 April 2025 to 31 March 2026 and is assessed in AY 2026-27.

Date	What is due	Who it applies to
15 Jun 2025	Advance tax, 1st instalment (15%)	NRIs whose FY 2025-26 tax after TDS exceeds Rs 10,000
31 Jul 2025	TDS return Q1 filed by deductors	Affects when your April-June TDS shows in 26AS
15 Sep 2025	Advance tax, 2nd instalment (45% cumulative)	Same advance-tax payers
31 Oct 2025	TDS return Q2 filed by deductors	Affects your July-September TDS credit
15 Dec 2025	Advance tax, 3rd instalment (75% cumulative)	Same advance-tax payers
31 Jan 2026	TDS return Q3 filed by deductors	Affects your October-December TDS credit
15 Mar 2026	Advance tax, 4th instalment (100%)	Same advance-tax payers
31 Mar 2026	Financial year ends; Form 10F and TRC for FY 2025-26 lapse	Everyone claiming treaty relief
1 Apr 2026	New USD 1 million repatriation window opens	Anyone repatriating from NRO
31 May 2026	TDS return Q4 filed by deductors	The gate before your full-year 26AS and AIS are complete
31 Jul 2026	ITR-1 and ITR-2 due for AY 2026-27	Most NRIs (salary, interest, capital gains, rent)
31 Oct 2026	ITR due for audit cases	NRIs with business income requiring audit
31 Dec 2026	Belated return deadline	Anyone who missed 31 July
31 Mar 2027	Revised return deadline	Anyone correcting a filed return

Advance tax: the dates most NRIs wrongly assume do not apply to them

The reflex among salaried NRIs is that advance tax is for businesspeople and the self-employed, and that TDS handles everything for them. For genuine salary-only NRIs with no Indian income, that reflex is correct. The trouble is that the typical NRI does have Indian income, and it is exactly the kind that TDS under-covers.

The rule is mechanical. If your total Indian tax liability for the year, after subtracting TDS already deducted, is more than Rs 10,000, you owe advance tax, and you owe it in four instalments on 15 June, 15 September, 15 December and 15 March. The cumulative targets are 15%, 45%, 75% and 100% of the year's liability. Senior citizens with no business income are exempt, but that carve-out is residency-neutral and rarely helps a working NRI.

Where this bites an NRI is rental income and dividends. A tenant paying rent to an NRI landlord must deduct TDS under Section 195 at the slab rate, but in practice many deduct nothing, deduct at the wrong 31.2% flat rate without your treaty benefit, or deduct only the Section 194-IB 2% meant for resident landlords. Any gap between what they deducted and your real liability becomes advance tax you must pay yourself. Dividends from Indian companies are subject to 20% TDS plus surcharge and cess for an NRI, but if your effective rate after the treaty is lower or if you have offsetting losses, the timing of the refund still runs through the return, while any net positive liability is advance tax.

Put real numbers on it. Take Anjali, a UK-resident NRI, who earns Rs 9,00,000 of Indian rent in FY 2025-26 from a Bengaluru flat. Her tenant, an individual, deducts nothing because he wrongly assumes the landlord is resident. After the 30% standard deduction her taxable rent is Rs 6,30,000, and her tax under the new regime, after the Section 87A position does not apply to her because her income exceeds the rebate ceiling, works out to roughly Rs 19,000 for the year once she nets a small TDS credit on bank interest. That is above Rs 10,000, so she owes advance tax. Had she paid nothing until filing in July 2026, Section 234B would add 1% a month on the shortfall from 1 April 2026 to the date she pays, and Section 234C would add interest for each instalment she skipped, perhaps Rs 1,800 to Rs 2,500 of pure interest on a Rs 19,000 bill. Had she instead paid Rs 2,850 by 15 June, reached Rs 8,550 by 15 September and cleared the balance by 15 March, the interest would be zero. The difference is entirely a calendar discipline, not a tax-rate question.

A second, sharper case is the large capital gain. Suppose Vikram, a US-resident NRI, books a Rs 22,00,000 long-term equity gain in February 2026. His fund house deducts TDS at 12.5% on the gain above the Rs 1.25 lakh exemption, which broadly matches his liability, so far so good. But if the gain were on unlisted shares or property where the buyer deducted on a base that did not match the true gain, or if he had carried-forward losses that the deductor could not know about, the residual is advance tax. Because the gain crystallised after 15 December, the law gives relief: a capital gain arising after an instalment date is allowed to be paid in the next instalment without Section 234C interest. So a February gain must be covered by the 15 March instalment to stay penalty-free. Miss that, and 234B interest starts ticking from 1 April. The honest read is that the 15 March date is the single advance-tax deadline NRIs most often miss, precisely because year-end gains feel like a next-year problem when they are a this-March problem.

The 31 July 2026 deadline, and why it matters even when you are owed a refund

For the overwhelming majority of NRIs the return is ITR-2, because it covers salary, capital gains, more than one house property and foreign-asset-free Indian income. A smaller set use ITR-1, and those with Indian business or professional income use ITR-3. For ITR-1 and ITR-2 the due date for AY 2026-27 is 31 July 2026. If you have business income requiring a tax audit, your date is 31 October 2026, and a handful of transfer-pricing cases run to 30 November, but those are rare for individual NRIs.

The reason to take 31 July seriously even when you expect a refund is that the cost of missing it is asymmetric. File by 31 July and you keep three things: the right to carry forward capital losses to set against future gains, freedom from the Section 234F late fee of up to Rs 5,000, and freedom from Section 234A interest on any unpaid tax. Miss it and you can still file a belated return until 31 December 2026, but the carried-forward loss is gone, the late fee applies, and 234A interest runs. For an NRI sitting on a capital loss this year that you mean to offset against next year's gain, a late return silently destroys that shelter. I have seen NRIs lose six-figure loss carryforwards purely because they assumed a refund return had no deadline pressure.

There is also a revision safety net that NRIs underuse. A return filed by 31 July can be revised, any number of times, and the revised-return window for AY 2026-27 runs to 31 March 2027. So the practical sequence is: file by 31 July even if your AIS is not perfectly reconciled, then revise before 31 March 2027 once your full-year 26AS and AIS settle. Filing first and revising later beats waiting, because the on-time filing locks in your loss carryforward and stops the clock on penalties, while revision lets you fix the numbers without cost.

TDS quarters: the dates that decide when your refund is even possible

NRIs treat TDS as something done to them and forget that the deductor's filing calendar gates their own refund. Here is the mechanic that matters. Tax deducted on your NRO interest, rent or capital gains does not appear in your Form 26AS and AIS the day it is deducted. It appears after the deductor files the quarterly TDS return that reports it. For payments to non-residents that is Form 27Q, filed quarterly, and the due dates for FY 2025-26 are 31 July 2025 for Q1, 31 October 2025 for Q2, 31 January 2026 for Q3, and 31 May 2026 for Q4.

The Q4 date is the one to circle. The fourth quarter covers January to March, which is when fund houses redeem, fixed deposits mature and year-end gains crystallise, so a large slice of your annual TDS often sits in Q4. That TDS will not show in your 26AS or AIS until the deductor files the 31 May 2026 return and it processes, typically into early June. This is why filing your ITR on 1 July rather than 1 April is not laziness, it is necessary: file too early and your 26AS understates your TDS credit, the system shows tax payable that you have actually already paid through deduction, and your refund is smaller or delayed. The discipline is to download your 26AS and AIS in mid-June, after Q4 has flowed through, reconcile every entry against your own records, and only then file.

The trap inside the trap is the deductor who files late or files against the wrong PAN. If your bank or buyer files Q4 after 31 May, your credit is delayed and your refund with it. If they quote a wrong or inoperative PAN, the credit may not reach you at all. An NRI with an inoperative PAN, which can happen if PAN-Aadhaar linkage status is misread for someone genuinely outside the Aadhaar net, faces TDS at the higher 20% rate and credit problems on top. Check your Form 26AS and AIS reconciliation before filing, and chase any deductor whose entry is missing rather than discovering it as a smaller refund.

Form 10F, the TRC and the annual renewal nobody calendars

This is the renewal that lapses silently and costs the most. To claim relief under a Double Taxation Avoidance Agreement, you need two living documents: a Tax Residency Certificate from your country of residence and a Form 10F filed on the Indian income tax portal. Both are time-bound, and both must cover the period in which the treaty income arises.

A TRC is issued by your home tax authority for a defined period, usually one tax year, which in the UAE and several other jurisdictions tracks the calendar year, and in the UK and others tracks their own tax year. The electronic Form 10F you file on the Indian portal is valid only for the financial year you file it for, and it does not auto-renew. So treaty relief on income arising in FY 2025-26, the year ending 31 March 2026, requires a TRC covering that period and a Form 10F filed for it. The moment the financial year turns on 1 April, you need a fresh Form 10F for FY 2026-27, and you need a TRC whose dates actually overlap the income.

The failure mode is a dating mismatch. Suppose Rohan, a UAE-resident NRI, holds a TRC for calendar 2025 and files Form 10F for FY 2025-26. In February 2026 he sells shares and wants the India-UAE treaty to take his Indian tax to zero. His TRC for calendar 2025 expired on 31 December 2025; his sale is in February 2026; the period is not covered. At assessment, the relief can be denied on exactly this gap, and he pays the full Indian rate plus interest. Had he obtained a TRC for calendar 2026 in January and ensured his Form 10F period matched, the relief holds. The honest framing is that treaty relief is not a one-time setup, it is an annual renewal that must be in place before the income arises, not scrambled together after the sale. Diarise the TRC application for the start of each relevant period and refile Form 10F at the start of each financial year you expect treaty income, and read DTAA mechanics for the exact filing steps.

Note that Form 10F renewal is separate from Form 15CB, the chartered accountant's certificate, and Form 15CA, the remitter's declaration, which together clear an outward remittance. Those are produced per remittance, not annually, but the same expiry logic applies in miniature: a 15CB certificate reflects the facts and rates on the day it is issued, so use it promptly, ideally within about 30 days, and obtain a fresh one if rates or facts change before you remit. They are a transaction event, not a calendar event, but they sit on the same critical path as repatriation, which is the next date.

The 1 April reset: the USD 1 million window and the timing game

The RBI allows an NRI to repatriate up to USD 1 million per financial year out of NRO balances, covering sale proceeds of property, investments, inheritances and the like, over and above current-income items such as rent and interest that are freely repatriable. The detail that turns this into a calendar decision is that the window is per financial year and resets on 1 April. It does not roll over. An unused part of this year's USD 1 million does not add to next year's.

That makes the timing of a large repatriation a genuine planning lever. If you have inherited property worth more than USD 1 million to bring out, splitting the remittance across two financial years doubles the headroom without any approval: send up to USD 1 million before 31 March and the balance on or after 1 April. The mechanics, the Form 15CA and 15CB certificates and the documentary trail, run through your bank, but the headroom is purely a function of which side of 31 March the remittance falls on.

Put numbers on it. Suppose Priya, a Canada-resident NRI, sells an inherited Delhi flat in January 2026 and nets Rs 16,00,00,000, roughly USD 1.9 million at the rates that year. If she tries to repatriate the whole sum in February, she breaches the USD 1 million annual cap and must go to the RBI for approval on the excess, which is slow and discretionary. If instead she repatriates USD 1 million in February 2026, inside FY 2025-26, and the remaining roughly USD 900,000 on or after 1 April 2026, inside FY 2026-27, both transfers sit comfortably under the cap and need no RBI approval, only the standard 15CA and 15CB. The cost of getting the calendar wrong here is not interest, it is weeks or months of delay and a discretionary approval you may not need at all. The full process is in the NRO repatriation guide.

A month-by-month checklist for the NRI tax year

Run this against your own income mix. Most NRIs will find three or four rows apply to them and the rest do not, which is the point: the calendar is short once you know which dates are yours.

April: New financial year. If you expect treaty income, apply for or confirm a TRC covering the new period and refile Form 10F for FY 2026-27. The new USD 1 million repatriation window is open from 1 April, so any large remittance you deferred from March can now go.

May: Deductors file Q4 TDS returns by 31 May. Do nothing yet, but know that your full-year TDS credit is only completing now.

June: Download Form 26AS and AIS in mid-June, after Q4 has flowed through, and reconcile against your records. Pay the first advance-tax instalment by 15 June if your post-TDS liability for the new year will exceed Rs 10,000.

July: File your ITR by 31 July for AY 2026-27. File even for a refund, and file on time to preserve loss carryforwards. You can revise later if your AIS shifts.

August to September: Pay the second advance-tax instalment by 15 September (45% cumulative). If you filed in July, check that your refund has been processed and chase any missing TDS credit with the deductor.

October to December: Pay the third advance-tax instalment by 15 December (75%). 31 December 2026 is the belated and revised return deadline for the prior year, so if you missed 31 July or need to correct a filed return, act before it.

January to March: This is the dense quarter. Pay the fourth advance-tax instalment by 15 March, and include in it any capital gain you booked since 15 December. Before 31 March, complete any repatriation you want inside this financial year's USD 1 million window, because it resets on 1 April. Note that your TRC and Form 10F for the year lapse on 31 March, so confirm next year's are lined up.

Edge cases

The capital gain that arrives after the last instalment. A gain crystallising after 15 March cannot, by definition, be covered by a 15 March instalment. The law accepts this: a gain arising in the final stretch is paid as self-assessment tax by the filing date without Section 234C interest for that instalment, though 234B can still apply if the overall advance tax was short. The clean move is to pay the tax on a late-March gain promptly rather than waiting for July.

You have only salary abroad and zero Indian income. Then almost none of this applies. You may still choose to file a NIL or refund return to claim back TDS on NRO interest, in which case only the 31 July date matters to you, and even a belated return to 31 December costs little if there is no tax payable and no loss to carry. Do not over-engineer a calendar you do not need.

RNOR transition year. If you returned to India and qualify as Resident but Not Ordinarily Resident, your Indian-income calendar is the resident one, but your foreign income is still largely outside the Indian net for those RNOR years. The dates above still govern your Indian-source income, but the scope of what you report changes. See RNOR rules before assuming the non-resident treatment continues.

Deductor files Q4 late. If your bank or buyer misses 31 May, your 26AS will be incomplete in June. You can still file using your own deduction certificates and Form 16A, claiming the credit, but be ready to revise if the entry lands differently. Keep the TDS certificate as proof of the credit you claimed.

Treaty relief claimed without a matching TRC period. The most common assessment dispute. If your TRC dates do not cover the income date, expect the relief to be questioned. Fix it by holding TRCs that overlap, and never let the certificate lapse mid-year on income you have already booked.

The closing read

The honest read is that NRI tax is not a July event, it is a small set of fixed dates spread across the year, and the expensive mistakes are all calendar mistakes rather than rate mistakes. Three dates carry most of the risk. The 15 March advance-tax instalment is the one NRIs forget, because year-end gains feel like next year's problem when the interest clock says otherwise. The 31 July ITR deadline matters even for a refund, because filing on time is what preserves your capital-loss carryforward and stops penalty interest, and you can always revise to 31 March 2027 once your AIS settles. And 31 March is a double deadline: it closes this year's USD 1 million repatriation window and lapses your Form 10F and TRC, both of which must be renewed before, not after, the income arises.

So for most NRIs the recommendation is concrete: diarise 15 March, 31 July and 31 March as hard dates every year; download and reconcile your 26AS and AIS in mid-June after the Q4 TDS return has flowed through, then file in July rather than April; and treat treaty relief and repatriation as annual renewals you set up at the start of the financial year, not as scrambles at the end of it. If your year includes a large property sale, a cross-year repatriation, or a treaty claim on a big gain, that is the point to bring in a chartered accountant, because the cost of a missed date there runs into lakhs, not the interest on a few thousand rupees.

Related guides

• Advance tax for NRIs
• ITR filing for NRIs: AY 2026-27 master guide
• TDS for NRIs and how to claim refunds
• DTAA mechanics: TRC, Form 10F and Section 90
• Form 26AS and AIS for NRIs
• NRI residency and RNOR rules
• Capital gains tax for NRIs on shares and mutual funds
• The NRO repatriation process
• All Taxation guides
• All Banking guides
• All Investment guides

This guide is educational and general in nature. It is not individual tax advice. Due dates can be extended by the income tax department, instalment relief depends on the timing of your income, and treaty relief depends on your exact residency and documents, so confirm your specific dates and positions with a qualified chartered accountant before you rely on them.