Old vs new tax regime calculator FY 2026-27 — which saves you more?

How to use the old vs new tax regime calculator

1. Enter your Annual gross salary and any Other income taxed at slab rates, such as interest.
2. Leave Salaried or pensioner ticked if you get the standard deduction, and choose your Age during the year.
3. Fill in the old-regime deductions you can claim: HRA exemption, Section 123 investments (formerly 80C), Your own NPS contribution, Health insurance for yourself and your parents, Home-loan interest, self-occupied, Education-loan interest, Professional tax paid and Other old-regime deductions.
4. If your employer pays into NPS for you, enter the Employer NPS contribution and your Basic + DA per year.
5. Read the verdict, the tax under each regime, the break-even point and the slab-by-slab working.

What it does and when to use it

Every salaried taxpayer in India has to choose between two ways of working out income tax. The new regime is the default. It has lower slab rates and a large rebate but allows almost no deductions. The old regime has higher slab rates but lets you subtract investments, insurance, rent and home-loan interest.

This calculator works out both, side by side, for tax year 2026-27 (1 April 2026 to 31 March 2027) under the Income-tax Act, 2025. Use it at the start of the year when your employer asks which regime you want, before you commit to tax-saving investments, and again before filing your return.

It also answers the question that matters most: how much would you need in deductions for the old regime to be worth it? That is the break-even figure.

How it works

For each regime the calculator does the same five steps.

1. Taxable income = gross income − deductions that regime allows. Each deduction is capped at its legal limit.
2. Slab tax = income in each slab × that slab’s rate, added up.
3. Rebate (Section 156): the new regime cancels up to ₹60,000 of tax if taxable income is ₹12 lakh or less, with marginal relief just above. The old regime cancels up to ₹12,500 if taxable income is ₹5 lakh or less.
4. Surcharge above ₹50 lakh of income (10%, rising in steps), with marginal relief. The new regime caps it at 25%.
5. Cess of 4% on tax plus surcharge.

Total tax = (slab tax − rebate + surcharge) × 1.04

Slabs for tax year 2026-27

In the old regime, people aged 60 to 79 pay nothing up to ₹3 lakh, and those 80 or older nothing up to ₹5 lakh.

Deduction limits applied in the old regime

The break-even figure comes from a search. The calculator tries different totals of old-regime deductions and finds the smallest one at which the old regime’s tax is no higher than the new regime’s.

Worked examples

All figures below come from the calculator.

₹15 lakh salary, ₹1.5 lakh Section 123, ₹25,000 health insurance, ₹2,400 professional tax. Old-regime taxable income is ₹12,72,600, giving tax of ₹2,02,051.20. New-regime taxable income is ₹14,25,000 and tax is ₹97,500. The new regime saves ₹1,04,551.20, about ₹8,713 a month. The old regime would need ₹5,43,750 of deductions to break even; this person has ₹1,77,400.

₹18 lakh salary with big deductions. HRA exemption ₹2.4 lakh, Section 123 ₹1.5 lakh, own NPS ₹50,000, health insurance ₹25,000 for the family and ₹50,000 for senior parents, home-loan interest ₹2 lakh and professional tax ₹2,400 add up to ₹7,17,400. That is above the break-even of ₹6,41,667, so the old regime saves ₹23,628.80 (₹1,27,171.20 against ₹1,50,800).

₹25 lakh salary, ₹7.87 lakh of deductions. Even with HRA ₹3.6 lakh, home-loan interest ₹2 lakh, full Section 123, NPS and health insurance, the new regime is ₹3,931.20 cheaper. The old regime breaks even at ₹8,00,000 of deductions. At that level both regimes’ slab tax is exactly ₹3,07,500.

₹12.75 lakh salary, no deductions. New-regime tax is ₹0. The old regime would charge ₹1,87,200 with no deductions.

Limits and tips

• Resident individuals with salary and slab-rate income. Capital gains, lottery winnings and other special-rate income, business income, agricultural income and non-residents are not covered.
• Enter amounts you can actually claim. HRA exemption depends on rent, salary and city; work it out with the HRA calculator first. Home-loan interest on a let-out home follows different rules; use the home-loan tax benefit calculator.
• Tax is shown before rounding to the nearest ₹10.
• Employer NPS. If you leave Basic + DA at 0, the employer NPS you enter is deducted in full in both regimes.
• Professional tax is deducted only in the old regime. The new regime does not allow it.
• The table of results at many salary levels is in our guide, Old vs New Tax Regime FY 2026-27.

Related calculators

The income tax calculator gives a quicker comparison with fewer fields. To see what your CTC means each month, use the CTC to in-hand calculator. Weighing a raise? The salary hike and in-hand planner shows how much of it you keep. Saving under Section 123? The PPF calculator projects your balance.