Salary Calculator India – Calculate In-Hand Salary from CTC
By LegalDev India Tax Team
Your take-home pay is your CTC less employer PF and gratuity, then less your own PF, professional tax and TDS. On a ₹12 lakh CTC in the new tax regime, with a 40% basic and Karnataka professional tax, most monthly credits land at about ₹88,276. This Salary Calculator India tool runs the same steps on your numbers.
Free Salary Calculator
Fill in your annual CTC (or gross pay), basic as a percentage, HRA, any bonus or variable pay, your tax regime, whether PF applies and your state. Then press Calculate In-Hand Salary. Reset clears the form, and Copy Result saves the breakdown.
An offer letter says ₹12 lakh, so you work it out as ₹1 lakh a month. The first credit arrives near ₹88,000, and you wonder what payroll got wrong. Usually nothing. About ₹11,700 of that monthly ₹1 lakh was never cash for you: part of it is your employer’s PF and a gratuity provision, and part is deducted from you as your own PF, state professional tax and TDS. The tool above works through each layer using FY 2026-27 rules.
How to Use This Salary Calculator
Go through the fields top to bottom, starting from the offer letter.
1
Annual CTC. Copy the headline figure from your offer. If you hold only a gross-salary figure, type that and treat it as gross.
2
Basic salary percentage. Your payslip shows it; 40% to 50% of CTC is common. Of all the inputs, this one swings PF the most.
3
HRA, bonus and fixed allowances. Add each item your offer lists on its own line, including variable pay.
4
Tax regime. The new regime applies unless you choose otherwise. Switch to the old regime only if you expect to claim HRA, 80C or similar deductions.
5
PF and state. Say whether employee PF applies and pick the state where you work, so the correct professional tax slab is used.
6
The result. You see gross pay, employee PF, professional tax, estimated TDS, total deductions and monthly and yearly take-home.
Surprised by a low figure? Check the basic percentage first. The regime comes second.
What Is CTC, Gross Salary and In-Hand Salary?
CTC is the yearly cost of employing you, gross salary is the pay your payslip lists before deductions, and in-hand salary is the amount credited to your account.
An analogy helps. CTC is the invoice the company would see if it priced you as a project. It carries items you will never hold as cash, such as the employer’s PF share, a gratuity provision and sometimes a group insurance premium. Remove those and you reach gross salary. Remove your own PF, professional tax and TDS from gross, and the rest is take-home, also called net pay.
That is why ₹12 lakh as CTC and ₹12 lakh as gross are different offers. The second one puts more money in your hands.
Salary Components Included in the Calculator
Three groups of pay feed the result: basic, HRA with allowances, and bonus or variable pay.
Basic Salary
Basic is the fixed core of pay. Employee and employer PF are computed on it, and the HRA exemption limit is tied to it.
There is a newer guardrail against shrinking basic on paper. Under the Code on Wages, in force since 21 November 2025, allowances kept out of “wages” can account for no more than 50% of total remuneration. The excess is added back to wages for PF and gratuity (SBS HR, 2026). The test is applied to wage components as defined in the law, so basic need not equal 50% of CTC.
HRA and Allowances
The HRA exemption is the smallest of three figures: the HRA your employer actually pays, your rent less 10% of basic, and 50% of basic if you live in a metro (40% elsewhere). It exists only in the old regime.
Through FY 2025-26, the 50% group was Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata and Chennai. Several payroll sources report that from 1 April 2026, Rule 279 of the Income-tax Rules, 2026 adds Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Pune and Ahmedabad (IndianHRM, 2026; TaxGuru, 2026). Early coverage described the list as a draft, so read the final text of the rule before you change a rent declaration.
Conveyance, special allowance and meal coupons vary by employer. Most are fully taxable unless a specific exemption covers them.
Bonus and Variable Pay
Variable pay normally sits inside CTC but arrives separately, quarterly or yearly. It is taxed as salary, usually in the year you receive it.
Your employer bases TDS on projected income for the year. When a large bonus is paid, that month’s tax cut can look heavier than the months before and after it.
Deductions Considered in Salary Calculation
Three recoveries sit between gross pay and the bank credit: employee PF, professional tax and income tax.
Employee PF
Your PF share is 12% of PF wages (basic plus dearness allowance). The mandatory wage ceiling stood at ₹15,000 a month for years. Notification S.O. 5109(E), dated 17 September 2026 and issued under the Code on Social Security, 2020, raised it to ₹25,000 from that date (BDO India, 2026).
What that does to your payslip:
- The highest mandatory employee contribution goes from ₹1,800 to ₹3,000 a month, which is 12% of ₹25,000. If your PF wages are ₹25,000 or more, up to ₹1,200 a month less may reach your account.
- Employees with PF wages of ₹15,001 to ₹25,000 who sat outside the scheme now have to be enrolled.
- September 2026 was a split month: the old ceiling applied to 1–16 September and the new one from 17 September, so October is the first month at the full new ceiling (SBS HR, 2026).
If your basic is above ₹25,000, contributing on the full amount is a matter of choice between you and your employer. Some companies still do, and others stop at the ceiling, so your payslip is the reference. Whether existing members see their contribution base change depends on scheme-level rules that are still being worked out, so ask HR before you assume.
Professional Tax
Professional tax is a state levy on salaried income. Article 276(2) of the Constitution limits it to ₹2,500 per person per year, however large the salary.
Some states levy nothing. Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Haryana and Rajasthan are on that list (HROne, 2026). Others set their own slabs, so two colleagues with the same pay can pay different amounts if they work in different states.
Two examples of how the cap is reached. Karnataka charges ₹200 a month on monthly salary of ₹25,000 or more, with ₹300 in February, for ₹2,500 a year; this follows the 2025 amendment effective 1 April 2025 (Karnataka Legislative Assembly bill summary via Lexplosion, 2025; greytHR, 2025). Maharashtra reaches the same ₹2,500 with ₹300 in March. Slabs move with state budgets, so confirm your state’s current notification.
Income Tax / TDS
Your employer deducts TDS each month from salary using the regime you declared and your estimated income for the full year. Instead of a long slab table, here is the cumulative tax, before 4% cess, at the top of each band for tax year 2026-27 (rates per CalcGuru, 2026):
| Regime | Income Up To | Tax Payable at That Point |
|---|
| New | ₹8 lakh | ₹20,000 |
| New | ₹12 lakh | ₹60,000 (before rebate) |
| New | ₹16 lakh | ₹1,20,000 |
| New | ₹20 lakh | ₹2,00,000 |
| New | ₹24 lakh | ₹3,00,000 |
| Old (below 60) | ₹5 lakh | ₹12,500 |
| Old (below 60) | ₹10 lakh | ₹1,12,500 |
Income below ₹4 lakh (new) or ₹2.5 lakh (old) is untaxed. After ₹24 lakh in the new regime, and after ₹10 lakh in the old, the top rate is 30%.
The new regime allows a ₹75,000 standard deduction and a rebate, once in Section 87A of the old law, that cancels tax on taxable income up to ₹12 lakh, with marginal relief just above. For a salaried person that works out to no tax up to roughly ₹12.75 lakh. The old regime gives a ₹50,000 standard deduction and a rebate of up to ₹12,500 on income up to ₹5 lakh, but it lets you claim HRA, 80C and other deductions that the new regime ignores.
Torn between the two? Compare them in our
income tax calculator, or see how much room is left under
Section 80C and
Section 80D.
Salary Calculator Example
The case: ₹12 lakh CTC, new regime, Karnataka. Assumptions: basic is 40% of CTC (₹4,80,000), HRA is 50% of basic, gratuity is provided at 4.81% of basic, and PF is paid on the full basic by you and by your employer.
| Step | Per Year | Per Month (Typical) |
|---|
| CTC | ₹12,00,000 | ₹1,00,000 |
| Minus employer PF (12% of basic) | ₹57,600 | ₹4,800 |
| Minus gratuity provision | ₹23,088 | ₹1,924 |
| Gross salary | ₹11,19,312 | ₹93,276 |
| Minus employee PF (12% of basic) | ₹57,600 | ₹4,800 |
| Minus professional tax (Karnataka) | ₹2,500 | ₹200 (₹300 in February) |
| Income tax | ₹0 | ₹0 |
| In-hand salary | ₹10,59,212 | ₹88,276 (₹88,176 in February) |
How the tax line comes out: after the ₹75,000 standard deduction, taxable income is ₹10,44,312. Slab tax on that is about ₹44,431, and the rebate wipes it out, so TDS is nil.
Set that against ₹1,00,000 a month and the gap is ₹11,724. Of this, ₹9,600 is PF, your share plus your employer’s, and it accumulates in your EPF account, so it is saved rather than lost.
If PF is paid on the ₹25,000 ceiling
Each side contributes ₹3,000 a month instead of ₹4,800. Suppose the freed amount returns as taxable special allowance. Gross rises to about ₹11,40,912, tax stays nil and a typical month’s take-home is about ₹91,876. Your company’s structure decides which basis applies, so ask HR.
When tax does bite: ₹20 lakh CTC
With the same 40% basic, gross is about ₹18,65,520, or ₹1,55,460 a month. After the standard deduction, taxable income is ₹17,90,520. Slab tax is ₹1,58,104 and cess ₹6,324, so TDS is about ₹1,64,428 a year, or ₹13,702 a month. Employee PF is ₹8,000 a month and professional tax ₹200, which leaves about ₹1,33,558 in a typical month.
One more observation from the ₹12 lakh case. The new regime already gives zero tax at that CTC, so the old regime cannot reduce tax further. HRA and 80C start to matter only when taxable income climbs beyond the rebate.
These are worked illustrations. Your result depends on how your company splits CTC and which regime you pick.
CTC vs Gross Salary vs In-Hand Salary
| | CTC | Gross Salary | In-Hand Salary |
|---|
| What it covers | All employer spending on you, including employer PF and gratuity | CTC less employer-only costs | Gross less your PF, professional tax and TDS |
| Where you see it | Offer letter | Payslip, before deductions | Bank credit |
| Moves with regime choice? | No | No | Yes, since TDS differs between regimes |
Why Use LegalDev India's Salary Calculator?
It builds take-home from the inputs that actually move it: CTC, basic percentage, HRA, bonus, regime, PF status and state. It is set for the FY 2026-27 slabs, the ₹25,000 EPF ceiling and the wider HRA metro list, not a rough “deduct 20%” shortcut.
Some of these rules changed only in September 2026. A calculator still running last year’s numbers can be wrong by thousands of rupees a month. For PF or gratuity on their own, use the separate calculators next to this one. Employers can look at our professional tax service for registration and filing.
FAQs
Subtract employer PF and the gratuity provision from CTC to get gross salary. Then subtract your own PF, professional tax and TDS. What remains is the monthly credit, once divided by 12.
CTC counts employer contributions that never reach you as cash, and your own PF, professional tax and TDS come off after that. In the ₹12 lakh example, ₹11,724 a month disappears, and ₹9,600 of it goes into your EPF account.
It is ₹25,000 a month from 17 September 2026, up from ₹15,000, under Notification S.O. 5109(E) issued under the Code on Social Security, 2020.
No. The constitutional cap is ₹2,500 a year, but states set their own slabs, and Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Haryana and Rajasthan are among those with none.
It depends on your deductions. Up to about ₹12.75 lakh of salary the new regime already means no tax, so the old one seldom helps. Beyond that, large HRA and a full ₹1.5 lakh under 80C can swing it to the old regime.
Yes. The cap is 50% of basic in a metro and 40% elsewhere, but only in the old regime. The new regime has no HRA exemption.
Payroll sources say Rule 279 of the Income-tax Rules, 2026 places Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Pune and Ahmedabad in the 50% group from 1 April 2026, and one tracker dates the notification to 20 March 2026 (TaxFetch India, 2026). Older coverage called it a draft. Check the rule text or ask payroll before relying on it.
Usually the reverse. PF is 12% of basic, so a larger basic reduces monthly cash. It does enlarge your HRA limit and the balance building up in your PF account.
No. Bonus and variable pay are taxed as salary at your slab rate, generally in the year received. India has no lower rate for bonus income.
Salaried people with no business income can generally choose either regime at filing time each year, even if the declaration given to the employer for TDS said otherwise. File by the due date, because a late return can limit that choice.