NRIWallah team
Updated
November 2026
· 3 min read
What the ledger is for
Most NRIs with money in India have small amounts of income arriving all year. There is interest on an NRO savings account, quarterly interest on a fixed deposit, monthly rent, the odd dividend and a capital gain when a fund is sold. Each one has tax taken at source, usually at a rate well above what the income would attract on its own. Each one may also need to be declared where you live.
The difficulty is not the arithmetic. India counts the income from April to March, and your home country counts it over a different year, in a different currency. Twelve months later the paperwork has to be pieced together from statements, Form 16A certificates and the Annual Information Statement.
The ledger keeps one line per credit, with its date, its kind, the amount, the TDS and the exchange rate on the day. It then shows the same entries two ways. The India view groups them by financial year, ready for an Indian return and for the TDS refund estimator. The your tax year view groups them by the year where you live and converts each entry at its own rate, which is what a foreign income page of a UK Self Assessment or a US Form 1040 asks for.
How the exchange rate is chosen
For the pound, euro and dollar, the rate box fills in with the European Central Bank reference rate for the day the income was credited. On a weekend it uses the nearest earlier published day, the same rule as the historical exchange rate tool. For other currencies, and for dates outside the last twelve months, it offers today’s rate and marks the entry as using a default. You can type the rate your tax authority uses instead, and the ledger keeps whichever you entered.
What the totals mean
The India view shows the TDS deducted against each kind of income. When TDS has been taken at 31.2% on interest and rent that would attract little tax at slab rates, the gap is usually refundable, but only by filing a return. The guide to filing an Indian return as an NRI covers who has to file and by when.
The home view shows the Indian tax deducted in your own tax year, converted at each entry’s rate. Many countries give credit for Indian tax on the same income under a tax treaty, up to the tax they charge on it. The DTAA estimator shows how that credit usually works for the UK, US, Canada and others. Rent has its own rules on both sides, explained in the rent TDS calculator.
The ledger is a record. It does not decide how any income is taxed, which depends on your residence status in each country and the treaty between them.
