You moved back to India but kept the US brokerage. Die owning it, and the US taxes everything over $60,000.

A US citizen can leave roughly $15 million before US estate tax bites. A non-US-domiciliary, which is what you become when you move back to India for good, can leave just $60,000 of US assets. Everything above that is taxed up to 40% when they die.

It turns on domicile, not the day-count residency test you know from income tax. Domicile is about intent: once you have moved to India meaning to stay, you have shed US domicile for estate tax, and the $60,000 floor is what is left. There is no US-India estate treaty to raise it (residents of about 15 treaty countries get more; India is not one), and India has no estate tax of its own to credit against the US bill. So the US charge lands in full.

This is where people guess wrong. Estate tax follows the asset's situs, its legal location, and the rules are not intuitive.

Two things people assume will help, and neither does.

First, the treaty. The US has estate-tax treaties with about 15 countries that raise the $60,000 floor for their residents. India is not one of them. The India-US treaty you may have used to cut TDS is an income-tax treaty; it does nothing for estate tax.

Second, the idea that India will give credit for the US tax. India has no estate or inheritance tax at all, abolished in 1985, so there is nothing on the Indian side to credit it against. The US tax is simply a cost, paid out of the estate before your heirs receive what is left.

None of this is exotic, but the timing is everything: most of it works cleanly only while you are still a US person and can restructure without a US exit-tax hit. A cross-border advisor will usually look at a few things.

Swapping US-domiciled funds like a VOO or SPY for the Ireland-domiciled equivalent that holds the same index but sits outside the US estate net. Drawing down or restructuring the 401(k) or IRA rather than leaving a large balance exposed. Checking the spouse trap, because if your spouse is not a US citizen the usual leave-it-all-to-each-other deduction does not apply and deferring the tax needs a specific trust. And simply keeping US-situs holdings under the $60,000 line where the portfolio allows.

The point is that a decision taken in the months before you land in India can remove an exposure that is very hard to unwind once you are a non-domiciliary.

When your heirs in India inherit these assets, India itself asks for nothing. There is no estate tax, no inheritance tax, and no tax simply on receiving the assets.

The Indian tax only appears later, when an heir sells. At that point the heir does not get a fresh cost; they inherit your original cost of acquisition (Section 49(1)) and your holding period (Section 2(42A)), so the gain is measured from what you paid, not from the value on the date of death. That is the piece a CA handles on the India side, and it is worth getting the records straight while you still can.

This is a cross-border problem, and no single person owns both ends. The US estate exposure and the fund and trust restructuring sit with a US advisor. The India side, how the assets are taxed when your heirs sell, your own residential status and RNOR window on return, and keeping the two plans in step, is the Indian CA's part.

The mistake is treating them separately and discovering, years later, that a $60,000 floor quietly sat under a seven-figure US account the whole time. If you are holding US assets and planning to settle in India, the time to map both sides is before you move, not after.