Methodology and sources

The only defensible claim a young money site can make is that it shows its workings. So: here is every dataset behind the calculators, where it came from, when a human last read the source, and how often it has to be re-read.

Datasets

The rules we encode

• Wages. Basic + DA at no less than 50% of remuneration (2026-27), per the Code on Wages, 2019, in force 21 November 2025.
• EPF. 12% employee and 12% employer on basic, with the statutory ₹15,000/month wage ceiling available as an option.
• Gratuity. Provided at 4.81% of basic — the annual equivalent of 15/26 of a month's basic per year of service.
• Professional tax. Derived from the state's own schedule, capped at ₹2,500 a year under Article 276(2). Deductible from taxable income under the old regime only.
• Income tax. Income-tax Act, 2025 (in force 1 April 2026; replaces the Income-tax Act, 1961). The Union Budget 2026 left the new-regime slabs, the Rs 75,000 standard deduction, the s.156 rebate, surcharge rates and cess unchanged from FY 2025-26.
• Rebate and relief. Section 156 of the Income-tax Act 2025 (the erstwhile section 87A of the 1961 Act), with marginal relief above the ₹12 lakh threshold, and marginal relief at every surcharge threshold.
• Old-regime deductions. Investments and savings (s.123, the erstwhile 80C), Health insurance — you and your family (s.126, the erstwhile 80D), Health insurance — your parents (s.126, the erstwhile 80D), Home-loan interest (s.22, the erstwhile 24(b)), Additional NPS contribution (s.124, the erstwhile 80CCD(1B)), HRA exemption (s.11, the erstwhile 10(13A)). Each is capped at its statutory limit before it reaches taxable income, and the section correspondence comes from the section map rather than from this page.
• Health insurance. Section 126 of the Income-tax Act, 2025 (No. 30 of 2025), read with the definition of 'senior citizen' in s.2(100). Not amended by the Finance Act, 2026.. Not one ceiling but two: s.126(2)(a) covers you, your spouse and your dependent children at ₹25,000, or ₹50,000 where that cover insures a senior citizen; s.126(2)(b) covers your parents, whether or not they depend on you at ₹25,000, or ₹50,000 where that cover insures a senior citizen. The two are tested separately, so the familiar ₹1,00,000 applies only when both covers insure one. s.2(100): an individual resident in India who is of the age of sixty years or more at any time during the relevant tax year. Read the section
• HRA exemption. Two different citations for two different things. The exemption is given by s.11 of the Income-tax Act, 2025 read with Schedule III (Table: Sl. No. 11), which exempts the allowance only 'to such extent as may be prescribed having regard to the area or place in which such accommodation is situated' — that is the substantive authority, and it names no city and no share. The extent is prescribed by Rule 279 of the Income-tax Rules, 2026, which the Central Board of Direct Taxes made under s.533, the Act's rule-making power; rule 279 is headed 'Limits for the purposes of Schedule III [Table: Sl.No. 11] to the Act'. Rule 279's limit: the least of the allowance received, rent less 10% of salary, and 50% of salary in Mumbai, Kolkata, Delhi, Chennai, Hyderabad, Pune, Ahmedabad, Bengaluru or 40% anywhere else. That list has 8 cities in it because the Rules notified on 20 March 2026 added four to the four that were there before — a change that lives in the Rules, not the Act, and is therefore invisible to anyone re-reading only the Act. Read the rule

What we have not encoded yet

We would rather show a gap than a guess. Professional tax is published for 35 of 36 states and union territories. This one is still pending:

• Meghalaya — The 2022 amendment moved the rates out of the Act and into a notification we could not locate, and the two candidate schedules differ by an order of magnitude at the bottom — so we show a gap rather than a guess.

Where our source is weaker than we would like

A published number is not the same as a well-sourced one. Every state entry carries a confidence grade: high means we read a primary source on a government host, medium means independent sources agree exactly, and low means no official schedule was reachable and we are publishing a documented best reading. 5 of the 35 published entries are graded low. The calculator flags each of them beside the figure it produces; here they are in full, with what we could not read:

• Dadra & Nagar Haveli and Daman & Diu — The weakest no-levy call in this dataset: India Code refused automated fetches, so the absence of an operative schedule rests on payroll practice rather than on a primary source we read.
• Madhya Pradesh — Source conflict: the bare Act the state itself hosts still prints a seven-band schedule with a Rs 40,000 floor, every current secondary reports the three-band schedule we encode, and we could not find the notification that changed it.
• Manipur — No official Manipur schedule was reachable, and sources disagree even on whether the governing Act is of 1979 or 1981.
• Mizoram — The Act is confirmed; the rate table is not. No official schedule carrying a notification date was reachable.
• Nagaland — No official Nagaland schedule was reachable, and the commonly-cited table mislabels these bands as yearly when they are unambiguously monthly.

This list is generated from the dataset itself, not typed out here — a state cannot be downgraded without appearing on this page, and the build fails if one of them has no caveat to print.

Where the statute is ambiguous, and how we read it

The Income-tax Act, 2025 is a year old and does not settle every question it raises. Where it does not, we take the conservative reading — the one that claims less on your behalf — and say which reading we took, because a limit applied silently is indistinguishable from a limit read wrong. This list is generated from the dataset that carries the readings, so a reading cannot change without this page changing with it.

• s.126(2)(c) and s.126(2)(d), read with s.126(7) — Is medical expenditure deductible only for a senior citizen? Our reading: Yes — we treat it as senior-citizen-only, and do not model it at all. As drafted, s.126(2)(c) and (2)(d) allow up to Rs 50,000 of medical expenditure with no age qualifier on their face; the senior-citizen link appears only in s.126(7), phrased as a condition that bites when the person IS a senior citizen. Read hyper-literally that would open Rs 50,000 of medical expenditure to a taxpayer of any age, which would be a large unannounced expansion of the erstwhile 80D, where the equivalent proviso was conjunctive. We take the conservative reading. Nothing on this site claims the deduction either way.
• s.126(8)(a) — Whose age lifts the Rs 25,000 limit to Rs 50,000 on a single policy covering people of mixed ages? Our reading: Any one senior citizen insured under that clause lifts that clause's limit. s.126(8)(a) uplifts where 'such person is a senior citizen', referring back to the persons insured under the clause — which for s.126(2)(a) is the assessee or the family. So a 45-year-old whose policy also covers a 62-year-old spouse reads as uplifted. This mirrors the erstwhile 80D(4) and is the conventional reading, but the text does not address the mixed-age single-policy case in terms. We ask which of the two covers insures a senior citizen rather than assuming it from your own age alone.
• s.126(3) — Is the Rs 5,000 preventive health check-up limit per basket or shared? Our reading: Shared — Rs 5,000 in aggregate across both baskets, and inside them rather than on top. s.126(3) says the deduction for preventive health check-ups 'shall be allowed up to Rs 5,000 in aggregate' across s.126(2)(a) and (2)(b). A reading that gave Rs 5,000 to each basket is textually possible but sits badly with 'in aggregate'. We take the lower figure. In practice it changes nothing here, because a check-up is part of the amount you enter against the cover it belongs to and the basket limit binds first.

What the calculators do not model

• Salary income only. Capital gains, house-property income and business income are not modelled; special-rate income is excluded from the surcharge computation.
• Employer contributions to a recognised provident fund, the s.124(1) pension scheme and an approved superannuation fund exceeding Rs 7,50,000 in aggregate are a perquisite under s.17(1)(h), with the annual accretion on the excess taxable under s.17(1)(i) in a manner left to the Rules. Not modelled — see the `nps.aggregate_employer_ceiling` block for the quotation, the source and the reasoning. On the structures this site models it binds only once basic plus dearness allowance passes roughly Rs 28,80,000 a year.
• Tax is rounded to the nearest rupee; s.288B rounding to the nearest Rs 10 is not applied.
• Medical expenditure on a senior citizen for whom no health insurance is in force — s.126(2)(c) and (2)(d), up to Rs 50,000 within the same basket as the premium — is not modelled. We ask for premiums, not for medical bills, so we cannot tell whether the s.126(7) condition is met.
• The health-insurance deduction is modelled for an individual only. The Hindu-undivided-family variant in s.126(5) and its Rs 50,000 ceiling in s.126(6) are not modelled, and neither is the apportionment of a lump-sum multi-year premium over the years it covers under s.126(8)(b).