Leaving Australia? The ATO assumes you sold everything you didn't.

When you stop being an Australian tax resident and move back to India, Australia does something that catches most people off guard.

It treats you as if you sold your foreign assets on your last day as a resident, and it taxes the gain. You didn't actually sell anything. Australia taxes you anyway.

This hits your Indian shares, your Indian mutual funds, and your crypto. It leaves your Australian property alone, because that stays taxable in Australia whenever you actually sell it.

Here's the sting, with real numbers. Say you hold ₹50 lakh of Indian equity you bought for ₹20 lakh, a ₹30 lakh paper gain. Because you've held it over a year, Australia taxes only half of it, so ₹15 lakh. At Australia's top rate of 45%, plus the 2% Medicare levy, that's about ₹7 lakh of tax. On shares still sitting in your account.

The rule is automatic. The tax office doesn't warn you, and an Australian accountant usually won't raise it unless you ask.

There's a way to soften this. You can elect to defer the tax instead of paying it the day you leave.

When you make the election, Australia stops treating the assets as sold on departure and waits until you actually sell each one.

One catch: it's all or nothing. The election covers every asset caught by the exit rule, so you can't defer your shares and still crystallise your crypto.

Defer when a big bill on departure would hurt and you'd rather push it to when you actually sell. Just know two things first. Once you leave, Australia's 50% discount gets cut back for the years you're a non-resident, and India will tax the Indian-share gain anyway when you sell. So deferral is really about timing and cash flow, not escaping the tax.

Here's the part people get wrong. Your Indian shares are Indian income. India taxes the gain whenever you sell them, whether you're an NRI, newly returned, or fully settled. Coming back on RNOR status doesn't change that.

So the same gain can be taxed on both sides: by Australia (at departure, or later if you deferred) and by India (when you sell). The treaty stops it being taxed twice. You claim the Australian tax as a credit against your Indian tax, using Form 67 (renamed Form 44 from FY 2026-27). You end up paying the higher of the two rates once, not both stacked.

Where RNOR does help is your genuinely foreign holdings. For the two to three years you're RNOR, foreign income and foreign assets (Australian shares you kept, foreign interest, a foreign pension) stay outside the Indian net. Your Indian shares don't, because they're Indian.

We run the numbers both ways for your whole portfolio, asset by asset, and show you the tax under each path in both countries.

We handle the Indian side: your residency and RNOR planning, the foreign tax credit math, and your Schedule FA filing once you land. For the Australian election itself, we work alongside your Australian accountant.

If you're within six months of leaving and haven't run these numbers, that's the time to talk. In cases that reach us late, we've seen ₹15 to ₹40 lakh of tax that could have been planned around.