Before you start

PAN
A day count kept against April-to-March, not the calendar year
Records of foreign income and any foreign tax paid
A tax residency certificate from your home country if you intend to claim treaty relief

Step-by-step

1
Get the PAN before payroll starts
Your employer must report tax deducted at source against a PAN. Without one, withholding jumps to a penal rate that you can only recover by filing a return the following year.
OnlineWho: YouWeek 1
2
Count your days against April to March
India's financial year runs 1 April to 31 March. Arrivals from calendar-year countries consistently miscount and reach the wrong residency conclusion. Arrive after early October and you will usually fall short of 182 days for that year entirely.
OnlineWho: You
3
Work out whether you are RNOR
You are RNOR if you were a non-resident in nine of the preceding ten years, or present in India for 729 days or fewer over the preceding seven. Almost every fresh arrival qualifies. While RNOR, foreign-source income is generally outside Indian tax.
OnlineWho: You, with an adviser in year one
4
Model both regimes before letting the default apply
The new regime has lower rates and almost no deductions and applies unless you elect otherwise. The old regime allows house rent allowance, section 80C investments and home-loan interest. Lucknow sits in the 40% band for the HRA exemption, not the 50% band — the Income-tax Rules 2026 added Ahmedabad, Bengaluru, Hyderabad and Pune to the four long-standing metros, and Lucknow was not among them. With rents here already low, the old regime rarely wins, but run both.
Via employerWho: You
5
Expect no state professional tax line — and query it if one appears
Uttar Pradesh levies no professional tax. If a line appears on a Lucknow payslip, it usually means payroll is running a template written for a Maharashtra, Gujarat or Karnataka entity. Raise it rather than absorbing it.
Via employerWho: You
6
Arrange treaty documents before you need them
Claiming relief under a double taxation avoidance agreement generally requires a tax residency certificate from your home authority plus Form 10F. Obtaining one retrospectively, from abroad, after you have severed the relationship, is considerably harder.
OnlineWho: You

Documents you’ll need

PAN
Form 16 from your employer
Passport with entry and exit stamps for the day count
Annual Information Statement and Form 26AS
Tax residency certificate and Form 10F for treaty claims

Things most newcomers don’t know

Uttar Pradesh levies no professional tax, which most of the big Indian states do.

Maharashtra, Gujarat, Karnataka, West Bengal, Telangana, Kerala and Tamil Nadu all deduct a monthly professional tax from salary, capped at ₹2,500 a year. Uttar Pradesh — like Delhi, Haryana, Rajasthan and Punjab — levies none at all. The money is trivial; the point is that a net-pay comparison between two Indian cities is rarely like-for-like, and that a payroll template imported from a Mumbai entity sometimes carries a deduction across that has no legal basis in UP.

Source: Uttar Pradesh — no professional tax legislation in force

Lucknow stayed a 40% house rent allowance city when four others were promoted.

For two decades the old regime's HRA exemption was capped at 50% of salary in only Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata and Chennai, and 40% everywhere else. The Income-tax Rules 2026 added Ahmedabad, Bengaluru, Hyderabad and Pune from the 2026-27 year. Lucknow was not added and remains on 40%. Combined with the new regime's lower headline rates, that means the default regime wins here more often than it does in the cities that were promoted — check rather than copying a colleague's election from another city.

Source: Income Tax Department — house rent allowance

RNOR is a two-to-three year window on your foreign income and it is not announced.

While Resident but Not Ordinarily Resident, income arising outside India — foreign salary, overseas rent, foreign interest and gains — is generally outside Indian tax; only Indian-source income is caught. Once you tip into Ordinarily Resident, worldwide income becomes taxable and foreign asset reporting kicks in. Nobody tells you the date. Realising a foreign gain inside the window rather than just outside it can be worth a great deal.

Source: Income Tax Department — residential status

The April-to-March year changes the arithmetic of when you move.

Residency is counted per financial year. Someone arriving in November cannot reach 182 days by 31 March and so remains non-resident for that year, with only Indian-source income taxed. Someone arriving in July crosses the line comfortably. Where the move date is flexible this is one of the few genuinely large levers available, and it is invisible to anyone thinking in calendar years.

Source: Income Tax Department — residential status

Common mistakes to avoid

Counting days against a calendar year instead of April to March.
Letting the new regime apply by default without modelling the old one.
Accepting a professional tax deduction on a Lucknow payslip — UP does not levy one.
Assuming Lucknow got the 50% house rent allowance rate in 2026; it did not.
Filing without a PAN, or taking the penal no-PAN withholding rate for months.

Some of this may be out of date. Spotted something inaccurate? Help us keep it right for the next newcomer.