Which regime pays less tax — and where that flips.

The working

How the crossover is found

Encoded for financial year 2026-27 — tax year 2026-27 in the vocabulary the 2025 Act actually uses — under the Income-tax Act 2025, with rates charged by section 3 of the Finance Act, 2026. Salary income only.

• Every deduction reaches tax the same way. Section 123 investments, health insurance, home-loan interest, the additional NPS contribution and the HRA exemption are all subtracted from taxable income. So the crossover is a property of the total, not of how you got there — a full section 123 claim and the same amount of HRA exemption move the answer identically. That is what makes a single crossover figure meaningful.
• It is searched, not remembered. We carry no rule of thumb and no round number. The engine is run repeatedly at different deduction levels and the crossover is found by bisection, to the rupee, for your income, your state and your age band. The table under the panel is that search, sampled.
• The caps are the statute's, and they are applied. Claim more than a deduction allows and we reduce it to the ceiling rather than quietly using your figure — the panel shows what was allowed, not what was asked for.
• Professional tax is on the right side of the line. It is deductible from taxable income under the old regime and not under the new one, and it is derived from your state’s own schedule rather than typed in. The provision that allows it is the section 19 table, which is also where the standard deduction lives: the 2025 Act collected every deduction a salaried person gets into one table, so the two lines the panel subtracts before the slabs even start come from the same place.
• Above a certain income it stops moving. The crossover climbs while the slabs are still widening, and then it does not: at a CTC of ₹30 lakh it is ₹7,97,501, and at ₹1 crore it is still ₹7,97,501. Once every additional rupee is taxed at the same rate under both regimes, the total you have to claim to close the gap stops depending on what you earn. Our worked breakdown at that CTC is where the flat stretch begins on the ladder.

What each deduction is, and where it lives now

The Income-tax Act, 2025 replaced the 1961 Act on 1 April 2026 and renumbered everything. The section numbers below are the current ones; the old numbers are given because they are the ones on your payslip and your last return.

Claiming every capped deduction in full comes to ₹4,50,000 for someone under 60 whose parents are also under 60; section 126(8)(a) lifts it by ₹25,000 for each cover that insures a senior citizen, so the panel computes it from your own answers rather than quoting this figure at you. The HRA exemption has no rupee ceiling of its own — only the three-way test — so a crossover above that total is one you can only reach if you pay rent.

What this page does not model

Every deduction we leave out makes the old regime look worse than it really is for somebody, so the omissions are listed here rather than left to be discovered. In each case the reason is the same one: we publish a limit after reading it, not before.

• Donations (s.133, the erstwhile 80G) — the deduction is 50% or 100% of the donation depending on the fund, and several categories carry a further ceiling tied to total income. We have not read the qualifying-fund schedule under the 2025 Act, so we do not model it.
• Education-loan interest (s.129, the erstwhile 80E) — the deduction is uncapped in amount but limited to eight tax years from the year repayment starts. We do not ask when your repayment began, and a deduction we cannot time correctly is one we should not apply.
• Interest on savings and deposits (s.153, the erstwhile 80TTA) — this is a deduction against interest income, not salary. This calculator models salary income only, so there is no interest for it to sit against.
• Rent paid without an HRA component (s.134, the erstwhile 80GG) — it applies only to someone who receives no house-rent allowance at all. Every salary this calculator builds includes an HRA component, so the two cannot both apply.
• Medical expenditure on a senior citizen (s.126(2)(c) and (2)(d)) — section 126 allows up to ₹50,000 of medical expenditure inside the same basket as the premium, but only where no health insurance is in force for that person. We ask for premiums, not for medical bills, so we cannot tell whether that condition is met and we do not claim it. If it applies to you, your allowable deduction is larger than this page shows.
• The Hindu-undivided-family variant of section 126 — s.126(5) and its own ₹50,000 ceiling in s.126(6), and the apportionment of a lump-sum multi-year premium over the years it covers under s.126(8)(b). This page computes for an individual paying a year's premium.
• Pre-construction interest, separately. The Finance Act, 2026 amended section 22(2) so that the ₹2,00,000 ceiling now covers the year's interest and the one-fifth instalments of pre-construction interest together, rather than leaving room for both. We take a single figure for home-loan interest and cap it once, which matches the amended section — but if you have been claiming the two separately, the total you can claim this year is lower than last year's.
• Anything that is not salary. Capital gains, house-property income and business income are outside this calculator, as they are outside the CTC one. The house-property loss that may be set off against salary carries its own annual ceiling under section 109(1)(b), which we do not model either. House property has deductions of its own and we model exactly one of them — the interest above. The other is a flat 30% of the annual value, and both now sit in section 22, where the old Act had section 24. If you let a property, the old regime is worth more to you than this page shows.

Questions

Questions people actually ask

What is the crossover point between the old and new tax regime?

It is the total of old-regime deductions at which the old regime starts leaving you with more money than the new one, at your income. Below it the new regime pays less tax; above it the old regime does. It is not a fixed figure — it moves with your salary, your state and your age band — so this page computes it for the numbers you enter rather than quoting an average. The search runs on the same engine the calculator runs, and the table under the panel shows the working at each deduction level.

What deductions does the old regime allow in FY 2026-27?

Investments under section 123 up to ₹1,50,000, health-insurance premium under section 126 — ₹25,000 for your own and your family's cover and ₹25,000 again for your parents', each of those ₹50,000 where the cover insures a senior citizen — interest on a self-occupied home loan under section 22 up to ₹2,00,000, an additional National Pension System contribution under section 124 up to ₹50,000, and the house-rent-allowance exemption under section 11. The old regime also gives a ₹50,000 standard deduction and lets you deduct professional tax; the new regime gives ₹75,000 and neither of the others.

How is the HRA exemption calculated?

It is the least of three amounts: the house-rent allowance you actually receive, the rent you pay less 10% of salary, and 50% of salary if you rent in Mumbai, Kolkata, Delhi, Chennai, Hyderabad, Pune, Ahmedabad, Bengaluru or 40% of salary anywhere else. We compute all three from your CTC and the rent you enter rather than asking you for the exemption, because the answer is arithmetic and getting it wrong is the commonest mistake on a salary return.

Which cities get the 50% HRA exemption in FY 2026-27?

Mumbai, Kolkata, Delhi, Chennai, Hyderabad, Pune, Ahmedabad, Bengaluru. That list has eight cities in it, not four. Rule 279 of the Income-tax Rules, 2026, notified on 20 March 2026, added Hyderabad, Pune, Ahmedabad and Bengaluru to the four cities the old Rule 2A named, with effect from this tax year. If you rent in one of the four new cities, your exemption is larger than it was last year and larger than most published calculators will tell you, because the percentages live in the Rules rather than in the Act and a calculator that diffs only the Act will not have noticed.

Does the state I work in change which regime wins?

It can, by a small amount. Professional tax is deductible from taxable income under the old regime and not under the new one, so a state that charges it tilts the comparison very slightly towards the old regime — at the ₹2,500 constitutional ceiling, worth at most a few hundred rupees of tax a year. It is never the reason one regime beats the other, but it does move the crossover point, which is why this page asks for your state instead of assuming one.

Can the old regime win if I have no deductions?

At most salary levels, no — the new regime has a larger standard deduction and much wider slabs, so with nothing to claim it wins comfortably. The interesting question is how much you need to claim before that reverses, and that is the crossover this page computes. At very low incomes neither regime charges any tax at all, and then the two are level rather than one winning.

Should I choose the old regime or the new one?

That is not a question a calculator can answer, and this one does not try. It tells you which regime pays less tax on the figures you entered, for this financial year, on salary income alone. Whether to elect a regime also depends on things we do not know — other income, whether the deductions you have entered will actually be made, and what next year looks like. The mechanics are worth knowing: the new regime is the default under section 202 of the Income-tax Act, 2025, and a salaried person with no business income opts out of it afresh every tax year, along with the return under section 263(1). Someone with business income gets one bite: the option is exercised by the due date and can be withdrawn only once. Take the arithmetic to whoever files your return.

Does my salary get sent anywhere?

No. The whole computation, including the crossover search, runs in your browser and there is no server to send it to. The page is counted by a cookieless Cloudflare beacon that reports the URL and how fast the page rendered — and your figures are never in the URL, because the share button puts them after the "#", which browsers never send to a server at all. /privacy/ describes exactly what that beacon carries.

Check your take-home too

This page answers which regime costs less. The CTC to in-hand calculator answers what actually reaches your account each month under either of them, with the full CTC → gross → in-hand breakdown. Everything behind both — every dataset, source and verification date — is on the methodology page, and what this site is and is not is on the disclaimer.