Is transfer of long term investment proceeds from India considered taxable in the U.S.?
If you are a US resident (not necessarily citizen) then yes, you do have to pay capital gains taxes on any capital gains, including interest from assets oversees (like interest from a savings account). Additionally you have to report all your foreign bank accounts according to FATCA (https://www.irs.gov/businesses/corporations/foreign-account-tax-compliance-act-fatca).
foreign income, transfer it to my savings account in India  Yes you can transfer to India. The right account would be NRO/NRE. As an NRI one should not hold a regular savings account. forum that foreign income is not taxable unless used to buy stocks, fds etc If you are an NRI, income earned outside of India is not taxable in India. However any income you generate in India is taxable, i.e. interest income, gains from shares etc. Do we need to pay taxes for the money transferred No tax if you are an NRI even if you transfer funds to India. Taxation does not depend on whether or not you transfer the money, it depends on your status used to pay home EMIs or principle amount? You can use the money for what ever you like. No, IRA contributions can only be made in the form of cash (rollovers and conversions are different). You'd have to sell the investments in your taxable account, incurring capital gains or losses, then transfer the proceeds to your IRA in cash. Note that the amount you can transfer is subject to the limits on how much one can contribute to the IRA each year. You could look into Vanguard Target Retirement funds, which have a lower $1,000 minimum investment, or Vanguard ETFs. Why shouldn't I just keep my money in the savings account and earn the same amount (both accounts have the same APY in this case)? I will assume that you are transferring money from your savings account into a Traditional IRA and deducting the contribution from your income.  While you may think that the money that is being transferred is yours already -- it is sitting in your savings account, for Pete's sake! -- you are deducting that amount in getting to your taxable income, and so you are effectively contributing it from current income and not paying taxes on the amount contributed. So, consider the same amount of money sitting in your savings account versus the same amount of money sitting in your Traditional IRA account. While you will earn the same amount of interest in both accounts, you will have  to pay taxes each year on the interest earned in the savings account. You might  choose, as most people do, to not take money out of the savings account to pay theses taxes but just pay them from ready cash/checking account/current income etc., or these taxes might just reduce the refund that you will getting from the IRS and your State income tax authority, but in either case, you have paid taxes on the interest earned in your non-IRA savings account, and of course, long ago, you also paid taxes on the original amount in the non-IRA savings account.  So, if you take any money out of the non-IRA savings account, you don't pay any taxes on the amount withdrawn except possibly for the interest earned from January 1 till the date of withdrawal (which you are paying from ready cash). On the other hand, consider the Traditional IRA. The original deposit was not taxed in the sense that you got a deduction (reduced tax or increased refund) when you made the contribution. The annual interest earned was not taxed each year either.  So when you make a qualified withdrawal (after age 59.5 or by meeting one of the other exceptions allowing withdrawal before age 59.5), you are taking money on which you have not paid any taxes at all, and the IRS wants its cut.  The money withdrawn is taxable income to you. Furthermore, the money withdrawn is not eligible for any kind of favorable treatment such as having it count as qualified dividends or as long-term capital gains even if your IRA was invested in stocks and the money in the account is all qualified dividends or long-term capital gains.  If you make an unqualified withdrawal, you owe a penalty (technically named an excise tax) in addition to income tax on the amount withdrawn. If you are investing in a Roth IRA, you will not be getting a deduction when you make the contribution, and qualified withdrawals are  completely tax-free, and so the answer is completely different from the above. The finance team from your company should be able to advise you. From what I understand you are Indian Citizen for Tax purposes. Any income you receive globally is taxable in India. In this specific case you are still having a Employee relationship with your employer and as such the place of work does not matter. You are still liable to pay tax in India on the salary. If you are out of India for more than 182 days, you can be considered as Non-Resident from tax point of view. However this clause would not be of any benefit to you as are having a Employee / Employer relationship and being paid in India. Edit: This is only about the India portion of taxes. There maybe a UK protion of it as well, plus legally can you work and your type of Visa in UK may have a bearing on the answer with me and my wife coming from different countries, and us both living in a non-native country, we have very little clue where we will eventually settle down. The answer depends on where you reside currently, tax rules and ability to move funds. As well as where you plan to settle down and the tax rules there. From what I understand, once you eventually retire and take an annuity from your pension you are then taxed on it as income anyway? Yes and No. For example if you move from US to India, stay in India for 7 years. You then move your retirement funds from US to India the entire amount would be taxable in India. but would this 'freedom' would come with significant costs in terms of savings at retirement? The cost would be hard to predict. It depends on the tax treatments in the respective countries on the retirement kitty.  It also depends on whether the country you are staying in will allow complete withdrawal and transfer of retirement funds without penalty. foreign income, transfer it to my savings account in India  Yes you can transfer to India. The right account would be NRO/NRE. As an NRI one should not hold a regular savings account. forum that foreign income is not taxable unless used to buy stocks, fds etc If you are an NRI, income earned outside of India is not taxable in India. However any income you generate in India is taxable, i.e. interest income, gains from shares etc. Do we need to pay taxes for the money transferred No tax if you are an NRI even if you transfer funds to India. Taxation does not depend on whether or not you transfer the money, it depends on your status used to pay home EMIs or principle amount? You can use the money for what ever you like. If you had purchased the land directly from your NRI account in your name [with power of attorney] in your wife's name, it would have been very simple to get the funds back. Whenever you sell the land, transfer the funds into NRO account. From NRO account you can repatriate back USD 1 Million. A CA certificate is required detailing the purpose and that tax is paid on the funds, talk to your bank and it should be easy. The gains will be taxable in India as well as in the US. You can claim rebate to the extent of taxes paid in India. "The only ""authoritative document"" issued by the IRS to date relating to Cryptocurrencies is Notice 2014-21. It has this to say as the first Q&A: Q-1: How is virtual currency treated for federal tax purposes?   A-1: For federal tax purposes, virtual currency is treated as property. General tax principles applicable to property transactions apply to transactions using virtual currency. That is to say, it should be treated as property like any other asset. Basis reporting the same as any other property would apply, as described in IRS documentation like Publication 550, Investment Income and Expenses and Publication 551, Basis of Assets. You should be able to use the same basis tracking method as you would use for any other capital asset like stocks or bonds. Per Publication 550 ""How To Figure Gain or Loss"", You figure gain or loss on a sale or trade of property by comparing the amount you realize with the adjusted basis of the property. Gain. If the amount you realize from a sale or trade is more than the adjusted basis of the property you transfer, the difference is a gain. Loss. If the adjusted basis of the property you transfer is more than the amount you realize, the difference is a loss.  That is, the assumption with property is that you would be using specific identification. There are specific rules for mutual funds to allow for using average cost or defaulting to FIFO, but for general ""property"", including individual stocks and bonds, there is just Specific Identification or FIFO (and FIFO is just making an assumption about what you're choosing to sell first in the absence of any further information). You don't need to track exactly ""which Bitcoin"" was sold in terms of exactly how the transactions are on the Bitcoin ledger, it's just that you bought x bitcoins on date d, and when you sell a lot of up to x bitcoins you specify in your own records that the sale was of those specific bitcoins that you bought on date d and report it on your tax forms accordingly and keep track of how much of that lot is remaining. It works just like with stocks, where once you buy a share of XYZ Corp on one date and two shares on another date, you don't need to track the movement of stock certificates and ensure that you sell that exact certificate, you just identify which purchase lot is being sold at the time of sale."