Income Tax Calculator
Enter your income once and see the tax under both regimes side by side, which one is cheaper, and how much of a deduction pile the old regime would need to win.
Your income
Both regimes compared
Tax under the cheaper regime
— · effective rate —
- Tax under the new regime —
- Tax under the old regime —
- Difference —
- Income left after tax —
What this calculator assumes
- The new regime is the default. The old regime is now something you opt into, and this page shows both so the choice is visible rather than assumed.
- Everything you enter as income is taxed at slab rates. Capital gains, lottery winnings and other special-rate income are not modelled, and the section 87A rebate is not available against them.
- The 87A rebate and marginal relief at the rebate threshold are applied. Marginal relief at the surcharge thresholds is not, so treat incomes above ₹50 lakh as indicative rather than exact.
- The engine applies rebate marginal relief to both regimes. The relief belongs to the new regime, so old-regime tax is understated in the narrow band just above ₹5 lakh of old-regime taxable income — a band in which the new regime is cheaper anyway.
- Old-regime deductions reduce old-regime income only. Under the new regime the standard deduction of ₹75,000 is the only relief applied here; an employer’s NPS contribution under 80CCD(2) also survives there and is not modelled.
- Section ceilings on 80C, 80D and home loan interest are not enforced — enter the amount you are actually entitled to claim.
- FY 2026-27 uses the same ladder as FY 2025-26. Budget 2026 announced no personal tax change, and the Press Information Bureau releases mention neither slabs, rebate nor standard deduction — but section 202 of the Income-tax Act, 2025 could not be read directly, so this carry-forward is recorded as likely, not verified.
- Tax already deducted at source, advance tax paid, relief for salary arrears and losses carried forward are not considered. This is the liability, not the balance due.
How each regime arrives at a number
Both regimes work the same way mechanically and differ only in the numbers plugged into it. Income is reduced by whatever deductions the regime allows to give taxable income. That figure is then passed through a ladder of slabs, where each band is taxed at its own rate rather than the whole income being taxed at the highest rate you reach — a point worth restating, because the fear of “crossing into the 30% bracket” costs people more in bad decisions than the tax ever does. The section 87A rebate is subtracted next, surcharge is added on top for large incomes, and a 4% health and education cess is applied to the lot.
Take a salaried taxpayer on ₹14 lakh. Under the new regime the ₹75,000 standard deduction leaves ₹13.25 lakh taxable. The first ₹4 lakh is free, the next ₹4 lakh is taxed at 5%, the next ₹4 lakh at 10% and the last ₹1.25 lakh at 15% — ₹78,750, plus cess, giving ₹81,900. Under the old regime with ₹1.5 lakh of 80C, ₹25,000 of 80D, a ₹2 lakh HRA exemption and the ₹50,000 standard deduction, taxable income is ₹9.75 lakh: ₹12,500 on the 5% band and ₹95,000 on the 20% band, ₹1,07,500 plus cess, giving ₹1,11,800. The new regime wins by ₹29,900 despite allowing almost nothing to be deducted, because its rates on this stretch of income are so much lower.
The ₹12 lakh zero-tax point is a rebate, not an exemption
The most quoted number in Indian tax right now is misunderstood almost universally. Income up to ₹12 lakh is not exempt. The slabs still apply and still produce a tax of ₹60,000 on ₹12 lakh of taxable income — the section 87A rebate then wipes exactly that ₹60,000 out. The distinction is not pedantry, and it matters in two concrete ways.
The first is the ₹12.75 lakh figure you will also see quoted. That is the same ₹12 lakh limit, reached by a salaried taxpayer after the ₹75,000 standard deduction. Someone with business or professional income gets no standard deduction and so their zero-tax point sits at ₹12 lakh flat.
The second is more damaging. The rebate is not available against capital gains or other special-rate income. A salaried taxpayer with ₹10 lakh of salary and ₹2 lakh of equity gains has ₹12 lakh of total income and expects to pay nothing — but the gains are taxed at their own rate and the rebate cannot be set against them. Every calculator that treats all income as slab income, including this one, will give the wrong answer to that person. Enter only your ordinary income here and treat the gains separately.
Marginal relief, and the cliff it flattens
A rebate that vanishes at a threshold creates an absurdity: one rupee of extra income destroys ₹60,000 of rebate. Marginal relief exists to stop that. Where taxable income marginally exceeds ₹12 lakh, the tax cannot exceed the amount by which income crosses the line. At ₹12.05 lakh of taxable income the computed tax is ₹60,750 but the relief caps it at ₹5,000 before cess.
The relief shrinks as income rises and stops mattering at roughly ₹12.7 lakh of taxable income — about ₹13.45 lakh of gross salary — beyond which you simply pay the computed amount. This calculator applies both the rebate and the relief, so the results near the threshold will not match a tool that has implemented only the headline.
Age bands belong to the old regime alone
Under the old regime the basic exemption rises with age: ₹2.5 lakh under 60, ₹3 lakh from 60, and ₹5 lakh from 80, where the 5% band disappears entirely. Under the new regime there is one exemption of ₹4 lakh for everybody. A 72-year-old and a 28-year-old on identical incomes pay identical new-regime tax.
This is worth knowing because the Income Tax Department’s own senior-citizens page still carries an obsolete new-regime table with age-differentiated rows, and a good deal of secondary content has copied it. If a calculator quietly gives seniors a lower new-regime bill, it is reading that stale table rather than the current law.
What it takes for the old regime to win
The old regime is no longer a default; it is a bet that your deductions are large enough to beat a much gentler rate ladder. There is a break-even level of deductions at every income, and the calculator prints it beneath the results.
At ₹14 lakh of salary, the break-even is roughly ₹5.19 lakh of deductions on top of the standard deduction. That is a serious pile — a full 80C claim, a substantial HRA exemption and a home loan interest claim together — and if you cannot reach it, the new regime is cheaper. Note also what a deduction really returns: a rupee put into an 80C instrument saves about 31 paise of tax for someone in the top old-regime band once cess is counted, and about 21 paise in the 20% band. The money itself is locked away for years, so a deduction is worth chasing only if you wanted to hold the instrument anyway. Use the HRA calculator to establish your exempt rent figure before you assume the old regime wins, and read old versus new regime for the full comparison.
Surcharge, cess, and the 37% rate that survived in one regime
Above ₹50 lakh a surcharge is levied on the tax itself, not on the income: 10% above ₹50 lakh, 15% above ₹1 crore and 25% above ₹2 crore. Above ₹5 crore the two regimes part company — the new regime holds at 25%, while the old regime still carries 37%, which pushes the top effective rate to 42.7%. That single figure is enough to keep most very high earners in the new regime whatever their deductions look like. The 4% health and education cess then applies to tax plus surcharge in both regimes.
Marginal relief also exists at each surcharge threshold, so that crossing ₹50 lakh by a small margin does not cost more in surcharge than the excess income. That relief is not implemented here — one reason the assumptions block asks you to treat results above ₹50 lakh as indicative.
Which year are you actually calculating?
The Income-tax Act, 2025 came into force on 1 April 2026 and repealed the Income-tax Act, 1961. Rates did not move, but the vocabulary did, and the resulting confusion is real. “AY 2026-27” means the income of FY 2025-26 — the return being filed now. “Tax year 2026-27”, the phrase the new Act uses, means the income of FY 2026-27, the year currently in progress. Those are different years, and secondary sources conflate them constantly. Pick the financial year in which you earned the money, not the year in which you are filing.
The section numbers moved too. This page keeps the familiar 1961-Act labels — 87A for the rebate, 80C and 80D for the old-regime deductions — because that is still how payroll departments and search results name them. All of them have been renumbered under the Income-tax Act, 2025, and the replacements are deliberately not quoted here: they could not be read on a primary source, and a section number recalled rather than read is exactly what goes wrong on a page like this.
What this calculator cannot tell you
It computes a liability from a single income figure, and it does not know what you have already paid. TDS on your salary, advance tax instalments, relief on salary arrears received late, losses carried forward and deductions this page does not model will all move the balance due. It does not handle capital gains, presumptive taxation, or the taxation of a non-resident. Nor can it make the choice for you: comparing two regimes on one year’s tax ignores the lock-ins a deduction-driven strategy commits you to for years afterwards.
Common questions
Does the new regime give senior citizens a higher exemption?
No. Under the new regime the basic exemption is ₹4 lakh for everyone, whatever your age. The higher exemptions — ₹3 lakh at 60 and ₹5 lakh at 80 — exist only in the old regime, which is why the age selector on this calculator changes the old-regime column and leaves the new-regime column untouched. This trips people up because the Income Tax Department’s own senior-citizens page still displays an obsolete new-regime table with age-based rows. It has not applied since FY 2023-24. If a calculator gives a senior a lower new-regime tax than a 40-year-old on the same income, it is reading that stale table.
My income is under ₹12 lakh, so why does the calculator show tax?
Three reasons, in order of how often they bite. First, ₹12 lakh is a limit on taxable income, not gross — a salaried taxpayer gets there at ₹12.75 lakh gross because of the ₹75,000 standard deduction, but someone with business or professional income gets no standard deduction and crosses at ₹12 lakh flat. Second, the headline figure is a new-regime one; if your deductions are large enough that this calculator picks the old regime as the cheaper of the two, the rebate there is only ₹12,500 and stops at ₹5 lakh of taxable income. Third, the rebate does not cover capital gains or other income taxed at a special rate.
I have equity capital gains. Why is the answer wrong for me?
Because capital gains are taxed at their own rates rather than at slab rates, and this calculator applies the slab ladder to everything you enter. Worse, the 87A rebate is not available against special-rate income, so a taxpayer with ₹9 lakh of salary and ₹2 lakh of equity gains does not get the headline zero-tax outcome on the whole ₹11 lakh — the gains carry their own tax regardless. If any part of your income is capital gains, lottery winnings or other special-rate income, enter only the ordinary income here and compute the rest separately.
My income is just over ₹12 lakh. Does a small raise cost me ₹60,000 in tax?
No, because of marginal relief, which this calculator applies. Once taxable income crosses ₹12 lakh the rebate disappears and the computed tax jumps to about ₹60,000 — but the law caps your tax at the amount by which your income exceeds ₹12 lakh. At ₹12.05 lakh of taxable income the tax before cess is ₹5,000, not ₹60,750. The relief tapers off and stops helping at around ₹12.7 lakh of taxable income, roughly ₹13.45 lakh of gross salary, beyond which you pay the full computed amount.
Does the Income-tax Act, 2025 change what I pay?
Not the amount. The new Act took effect on 1 April 2026 and repealed the 1961 Act, but it is a rewrite rather than a rate change — the new regime moved from section 115BAC to section 202, and section numbers you may have memorised for deductions have all shifted. What did change is the vocabulary: the Act uses “tax year” where the old law used previous year and assessment year. Budget 2026 announced no change to slabs, rebate, standard deduction, surcharge or cess.
When is the return for this income due?
For FY 2025-26 — the income you are filing on now, assessed as AY 2026-27 — the due date for a salaried taxpayer with no audit requirement is 31 July 2026. A non-audit business return is due 31 August 2026 and an audited return 31 October 2026. Miss those and you can still file a belated return until 31 December 2026, with a late fee and interest, or revise a return already filed until 31 March 2027. No extension had been announced when these dates were last checked.
Sources
Rates and rules on this page were read directly from the following sources on the dates shown. Figures change — if you are about to act on one, confirm it at the source.