How the day of arrival and the day of departure count for your stay in India

Your residency turns entirely on days. To run your own numbers through these tests, use our residential status checker. Under Section 6, you are resident in India for a year if either of two tests is met: you are in India for 182 days or more in that year, or you are in India for 60 days or more in that year and for 365 days or more across the four preceding years. For an Indian citizen or person of Indian origin visiting India, the second, easier-to-trip 60-day test is normally relaxed up to 182 days, which is why the safe figure has long been thought of as 182.

The trap arrived with a Finance Act 2020 change, effective from the 2020-21 financial year (assessment year 2021-22). For a visiting Indian citizen or person of Indian origin whose Indian income, counting everything except foreign-source income, is more than ₹15 lakh, that relaxed figure was cut from 182 to 120 days. So a high-earning visitor who stays 120 days or more, even if well under 182, becomes resident for the year, provided they also spent 365 days or more in India across the previous four years. This catches exactly the people who tend to spend long stretches in India, those with significant Indian income from property, business or investments. Note this is separate from another rule, the deemed-resident rule, which can catch an Indian citizen with over ₹15 lakh of Indian income who is not taxed anywhere in the world, covered on its own page.

The Income-tax Act, 2025, in force from 1 April 2026, keeps these tests in Section 6 with the same 182, 60, 120 and 365 day figures and the same ₹15 lakh threshold, so nothing changes for tax year 2026-27.

There is an important cushion. A person who becomes resident only because of the 120-day rule is treated not as an ordinary resident but as Resident but Not Ordinarily Resident. That status matters a great deal, because an RNOR is not taxed on most foreign income, only on Indian income and on foreign income received in India or earned from a business or profession controlled from India. So being pulled into residency by the 120-day rule does not suddenly expose your overseas salary or investments, it mainly means your Indian income is taxed as a resident's. The same not-ordinarily-resident status generally applies for the first years after a returning NRI moves back, under separate tests based on your recent years abroad.

Neither the Income-tax Act nor any CBDT circular says how to count the day you land in India or the day you leave. The only counting rule we found in the Act or the Rules is a special one for crew on ships, based on their discharge certificate. So the answer comes from rulings, and they do not all agree.

Several Income Tax Appellate Tribunal rulings have let a taxpayer leave out the day of arrival, because a part-day is not a full day or because the first day of a period is excluded: Manoj Kumar Reddy (Bangalore, 2009), Fausta Cordeiro (Mumbai, 2012, where the taxpayer usually landed late at night) and Pradeep Kumar Joshi (Ahmedabad, 2021). One Kolkata ruling, Samir Kumar Ghosh (2016), went further and also left out the departure days. On the other side, the Authority for Advance Rulings (Petition No. 7 of 1995) counted both days, and in these cases the tax officer counted both. No High Court has squarely ruled on the point: the Karnataka High Court upheld the Manoj Kumar Reddy decision in 2011, mainly on the wider question of visit days.

So plan on the safe basis: count both the day of arrival and the day of departure as days in India, so a part-day at each end is a full day. Treat leaving out the arrival day as an argument you might win in a dispute, not as room to plan with. When you are close to 120 or 182 days, keep your passport stamps and boarding passes for every trip. A practising CA works out your residency correctly, including whether the 120-day rule catches you and whether the not-ordinarily-resident cushion protects your foreign income.

Take an Indian citizen working in Dubai who visits India. Their total income in India for the year, leaving out foreign income, is ₹20 lakh, and they spend 150 days in India, counting both arrival and departure days on the safe basis.

• If they were in India for 400 days over the previous four years: 150 is at least 120 and 400 is at least 365, so they are resident for the year. Because the 120-day rule is what caught them, they are Resident but Not Ordinarily Resident (RNOR), so their Dubai salary stays outside Indian tax and their Indian income is taxed as a resident's.

• If they were in India for only 300 days over the previous four years: the 365-day condition fails and 150 is under 182, so the 120-day rule does not make them resident. But because the UAE does not tax them on personal income, the separate deemed-resident rule for an Indian citizen with Indian income over ₹15 lakh who is not liable to tax in any other country can still treat them as resident, again as not ordinarily resident. Whether a UAE resident counts as not liable to tax is itself debated, so have a CA check it.

• If their Indian income were ₹12 lakh instead: the ₹15 lakh threshold is not crossed, so the limit for a visiting citizen stays at 182 days, and 150 days leaves them non-resident.

The ₹15 lakh figure is total income excluding foreign-source income, after deductions, not gross receipts, so check it on the numbers your return would show.