Sending $800,000 from India: A Practical Guide to EB-5 Fund Remittance
You've decided EB-5 is your path, you've got the capital, and now you're staring at the actual logistics: how do you physically send $800,000 from India to a U.S. project when RBI caps you at $250,000 a year?
This is where a lot of Indian investors get stuck, not on the decision, but on the execution. So let's make it practical. Here's a step-by-step guide to actually remitting your EB-5 investment from India, cleanly and compliantly.
The Challenge in Plain Terms
The core issue is simple arithmetic. Under RBI's Liberalised Remittance Scheme, each resident individual can send up to $250,000 abroad per financial year (April to March). Your investment is $800,000. One person, one year, can't cover it alone.
But this is a solved problem. Thousands of Indian families remit full EB-5 investments every year using completely legal, well-established methods. The trick is combining individual limits and timing your transfers across financial years, all while keeping the paperwork airtight. Let's walk through it step by step.
Step 1: Map Out Your LRS Capacity
Before moving any money, calculate your available capacity. Remember, the $250,000 limit is per individual per financial year, it's cumulative across all purposes, and it aggregates across every bank you use.
So first, check how much of your own limit you've already used this year on travel, education, or other remittances, since that reduces what's left for EB-5. Then identify which family members can contribute. Every resident individual in your family has their own $250,000 limit, including your spouse, adult children, and even minors through a guardian. Mapping out who can send what, and how much room each person has this financial year, is the foundation of your entire transfer plan.
Step 2: Choose Your Transfer Strategy
With your capacity mapped, pick your approach. There are two main strategies, and most investors combine them.
Family pooling: combine multiple individuals' limits. A husband and wife alone can move $500,000 in one financial year. Add two more family members and you clear $800,000 easily, potentially reaching $1 million in a single year.
Cross-year timing: since the limit resets every April 1, you can remit $250,000 in late March and another $250,000 in early April, moving $500,000 in a matter of weeks across two financial years. The right mix depends on your family situation and your timeline. If you need the money moved fast, family pooling gets you there quickest. If you have fewer contributing family members, cross-year timing helps you accumulate over a short window. This is exactly the kind of planning worth discussing early, which you can do via our contact page .
Step 3: Get Your Purpose Codes and Paperwork Right
This is where compliance lives, so pay attention. Every LRS remittance requires specific documentation on the Indian side: Form A2, an LRS declaration, and the correct purpose code for overseas investment.
Using the wrong purpose code is a common and avoidable mistake that can trigger reporting mismatches and complicate things later, potentially even affecting your ability to repatriate funds down the road. Each contributing family member's transfer needs its own correct paperwork. Your authorized dealer bank will guide you through the forms, but you should confirm the purpose code is appropriate for an EB-5 investment rather than something generic. Getting this right upfront prevents headaches on both the Indian regulatory side and the U.S. immigration side.
Step 4: Plan for TCS
Budget for Tax Collected at Source. As of 2026, no TCS applies on the first ₹10 lakh you remit in a financial year, but for investment transfers above that threshold, a 20% TCS rate applies on the excess.
Here's the key reassurance: TCS is not lost money. It's advance tax collected against your PAN, and you claim it back when you file your income tax return, or offset it against your tax liability. But it does temporarily tie up capital, potentially a significant amount on a large EB-5 transfer, until you file and get your refund processed. So plan your cash flow accordingly, and factor in that this money will be parked with the government for a while. A tax advisor familiar with LRS remittances can help you structure this efficiently.
Step 5: Align Every Transfer with Your Source of Funds
Here's the step that connects Indian regulations to U.S. immigration, and it's critical. Every dollar arriving for your investment needs a clean, traceable source of funds trail for USCIS, proving the money was lawfully earned.
That means your LRS remittance records on the Indian side must line up perfectly with your source of funds documentation on the USCIS side. When family members contribute through pooling, each person's funds also need their own lawful source documented, whether that's salary, business income, property sale, or a properly documented gift. Any gap or mismatch between what you remitted and what you can prove is exactly what triggers an RFE.
Getting these two systems to align cleanly is one of the most important parts of an Indian EB-5 filing, and it's a core reason to work through a thorough EB-5 due diligence checklist with experienced advisors.
Step 6: Time It Around Your Filing Deadline
Finally, work backward from your filing timeline. Your funds generally need to be fully transferred and invested before you file your I-526E, so your remittance plan and your filing plan have to sync up.
This matters especially given the September 2026 grandfathering deadline. If you're aiming to file before that date to lock in your protections, you need to account for the time it takes to execute your transfers, potentially across two financial years, plus assemble your documentation. Don't leave this to the last minute. Working backward from your target filing date tells you exactly when each transfer needs to happen. And since project selection affects your whole timeline too, vet your regional center early with these 8 due diligence steps and review current options on our upcoming EB-5 projects and completed projects pages.
The Bottom Line
Sending $800,000 from India for EB-5 isn't complicated once you break it into steps. Map your family's LRS capacity, choose a strategy of family pooling and cross-year timing, nail your purpose codes and paperwork, budget for refundable TCS, align every transfer with your source of funds trail, and time it all around your filing deadline.
Handle those six steps well, pair them with a strong rural project, and the fund remittance becomes a manageable logistics exercise rather than a barrier. Start by asking the right questions with our 10 questions every EB-5 investor must ask , and when you're ready to plan your transfers and choose a project, learn more about how we work at Georgia EB-5 .
Plan it properly, document it cleanly, and $800,000 moves from India to your green card without drama.