India CTC to In-Hand Salary Calculator

CTC (Cost to Company) bundles in costs that never reach your bank account: employer EPF contribution, gratuity accrual, and often insurance or other benefits. On a ₹18,00,000 CTC in this calculator's worked example, employer EPF and gratuity accrual alone carve out ₹1,36,161 before you even get to gross salary, and then employee EPF, income tax, and professional tax come out of gross pay, landing at roughly ₹1,20,130/month net under the New Regime, about 80% of the annual CTC figure.

Both employer and employee contribute 12% of Basic pay to EPF. The statutory wage ceiling is Rs 15,000/month of Basic, meaning employers can legally cap their 12% contribution at that ceiling. In practice, most Indian tech and IT employers contribute EPF on your actual Basic pay, uncapped, since CTC structuring already treats employer EPF as a real cost line. This calculator defaults to actual-Basic EPF and lets you toggle to the statutory ceiling if your employer caps it.

Gratuity is a lump-sum benefit paid out under the Payment of Gratuity Act, 1972 after 5 years of continuous service, calculated as 15 days' wages for every year worked. Employers commonly provision for this inside CTC at 4.81% of Basic per year (the 15/26 days per month, divided across 12 months, rounds to that figure). It's a real cost the employer sets aside, but it's not a monthly cash benefit, so it shows up as a CTC carve-out here, not as a deduction from your monthly take-home.

HRA exemption under Section 10(13A) lets salaried employees shelter part of their House Rent Allowance from tax, calculated as the minimum of three amounts: actual HRA received, 50% of Basic in a metro city (Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai) or 40% in a non-metro city, and rent paid minus 10% of Basic. The New Regime, the default since FY 2023-24, disallows this exemption along with most other Chapter VI-A claims, so it only reduces taxable income if you actively choose the Old Regime and have real rent receipts to back the claim.

Basic is the foundation your EPF and gratuity contributions are calculated from, typically 40-50% of CTC. HRA (House Rent Allowance) is usually expressed as a percentage of Basic, commonly 40-50%, and is the only major component with a tax exemption path (Old Regime only, and only if you pay rent). Special Allowance is the balancing figure: whatever CTC has left over once Basic, HRA, employer EPF, and gratuity accrual are subtracted, and it's fully taxable with no exemption available under either regime.

No. Professional tax is levied by individual state governments, not centrally, so the amount and even whether it applies varies by state. States like Karnataka, Maharashtra, West Bengal, and Tamil Nadu levy it (commonly around Rs 200/month, capped at Rs 2,500/year under Article 276(2) of the Constitution), while states like Delhi, Haryana, and Uttar Pradesh currently levy none. This calculator uses a representative flat estimate rather than a full state-by-state table.

It's a real tradeoff, not free money either way. A higher Basic percentage increases both your EPF contribution (forced retirement savings, but locked up) and your employer's EPF and gratuity cost, which usually means a lower Special Allowance and lower immediate take-home, all within the same CTC. A lower Basic maximizes monthly cash in hand today at the cost of smaller EPF and gratuity balances later. Try adjusting the Basic % slider below to see the exact tradeoff on your own CTC.