India CTC to In-Hand Salary Calculator

How this works

CTC is the total an employer spends on you. Your salary is a subset of it, and your take-home is a subset of that. The tool walks the three levels.

CTC splits into basic, HRA, special allowance, variable pay, employer EPF, the gratuity provision and employer NPS. You set basic as a percentage of CTC and HRA as a percentage of basic; whatever is left over after every named component becomes the special allowance. If that number goes negative, the split you described is impossible and the tool says so rather than quietly showing nonsense.

Gross salary is CTC minus the employer’s own EPF contribution and minus the gratuity provision. Neither is salary in your hands. Employer NPS stays inside gross, because it is taxable salary that then comes back out as a section 80CCD(2) deduction.

Take-home is gross minus your own EPF contribution, minus professional tax, minus income tax. The tool computes tax under both regimes and reports whichever is cheaper.

The three things that move the number most

The EPF basis. The statutory wage ceiling is ₹15,000, so 12% of it is ₹1,800 a month. Plenty of employers stop there. Others apply 12% to your full basic, which on a ₹15,00,000 package is ₹6,000 a month out of each side instead of ₹1,800. That is the single largest swing on this page, and offer letters are frequently vague about which one applies. Ask.

Gratuity. It is 4.81% of basic, it is counted against your package from the day you join, and it pays nothing at all until five years of continuous service. On a ₹15,00,000 CTC with a 40% basic that is roughly ₹28,900 a year of headline you may never collect. The tool lets you take it out of the picture to see what the package looks like without it.

Basic percentage. A higher basic raises your EPF and gratuity, which lowers take-home now and raises forced savings. It also raises the ceiling on your HRA exemption, which matters a great deal in the old regime if you pay serious rent. There is no universally right answer, which is why it is a slider rather than a constant.

Inputs explained

• Annual CTC - the headline number on the offer letter.
• Basic as % of CTC - typically 40 to 50%. Check your letter rather than guessing.
• HRA as % of basic - commonly 50% in the metros and 40% elsewhere, mirroring the exemption limbs.
• EPF basis - statutory ceiling, 12% of full basic, or not applicable.
• Employer NPS - deductible under section 80CCD(2) up to 14% of basic in the new regime and 10% in the old. One of the very few deductions the new regime still allows, which makes it unusually valuable there.
• City - for HRA, metro means Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata and Chennai. Those four, and nothing else, whatever the population of your city.
• Professional tax state - a state levy, capped at ₹2,500 a year by Article 276(2) of the Constitution, which is why nobody anywhere pays more than that. Deductible under section 16(iii) in the old regime only.

The tax engine

Tax year 2026-27, the first year under the Income-tax Act, 2025, which replaced the 1961 Act on 1 April 2026 and retired “previous year” and “assessment year” in favour of “tax year”. Budget 2026 left the slabs, cess, surcharge and rebate alone.

Two pieces of marginal relief are modelled, because leaving them out visibly breaks the numbers:

• The 87A cliff. In the new regime the rebate wipes out tax up to ₹12,00,000 of taxable income and then stops. Without relief, earning ₹10,000 more would cost ₹61,500. Relief caps the tax at the rupees you earned past the ceiling, so it is ₹10,000 plus cess.
• Surcharge thresholds. The same principle at ₹50,00,000, ₹1,00,00,000, ₹2,00,00,000 and, in the old regime only, ₹5,00,00,000.

Worth knowing: because relief caps the tax and then 4% cess lands on top of the capped figure, an extra rupee inside a relief band costs ₹1.04. Take-home genuinely dips very slightly across those bands. That is the law working as written, not a rounding error here.

Sources

• Income-tax Act, 2025 - in force 1 April 2026, verified 2026-08-28
• Published slab, surcharge, cess and section 87A figures for tax year 2026-27 (assessment year 2027-28), cross-checked across multiple sources, verified 2026-08-28
• EPF statutory wage ceiling of ₹15,000 and the 12% contribution rate, verified 2026-08-28
• Professional tax rates by state, subject to the ₹2,500 annual constitutional cap under Article 276(2), verified 2026-08-28

Limitations

• Estimates, not your payslip. Actual TDS depends on the investment declarations you file with your employer and when you file them.
• The salary structure is a model. Real letters carry LTA, food coupons, telephone reimbursement, car lease and a dozen other heads with their own tax treatment. This collapses all of it into the special allowance.
• Monthly figures average the year. If your variable pay lands as one lump, ordinary months are lower. The tool reports both.
• No capital gains. Sections 111A, 112A and 115AD cap surcharge at 15% on those. Feeding capital gains in here as ordinary income will overstate surcharge at the top end.
• Below 60 only for the age-based exemption. For the senior and super-senior bands, use the regime comparator.
• Old regime deductions are yours to enter. The tool will not check whether you actually hold the investments you claim.

Disclaimer

This tool is provided as is, with no warranty of any kind, express or implied, including no warranty of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, accuracy, completeness or currency. There is no guarantee that the slabs, rates, limits or rules encoded here are correct or current.

These are estimates from a personal engineering project. This is not tax, legal or financial advice, and no professional or advisory relationship is created by using it. Your actual liability depends on your full financial position, your employer’s payroll policy, the declarations you file and provisions this tool does not model.

Verify anything that matters with a qualified chartered accountant or tax adviser before you act on it, and do not use these figures to negotiate, plan or file. To the fullest extent permitted by law, no liability is accepted for any loss or damage arising from use of this tool or reliance on its output. Use entirely at your own risk.