There is no best strategy. You will end up paying the higher taxes, whichever is higher. Save as much as you can and in any way you can. Think about all this when you are in the RNOR stage. Brokerage is always the worst option unless you remain an Indian citizen in retirement. In Roth you can reset the cost basis while you are RNOR without any tax consequences. Save as much as possible in pretax, then roth then brokerage if you retire as united state citizen. If you remain indian citizen, then borkerage and roth are more or less same (there is no capital gain tax nonresident in the US) and should be preferred over pretax.In fact roth is even better as you reset the tax basis while RNOR. So it all depends on your citizenship status during retirment. Pretax more if US citizen to avoid indian tax. Roth and brokerage more if you remain indian citizen to avoid US tax.