New vs Old Regime

Mutual funds, stocks, NPS, PPF, gold, and complete tax planning — data-driven guides to build long-term wealth and minimise your tax outgo.

• New vs Old Tax Regime: The Complete Decision Map for HRA, Home Loan, Business Income, and Self-Employment — The salaried breakeven is ₹4.75 lakh in deductions — but that threshold shifts significantly with HRA, a home loan, business expenses, or self-employed income. This guide maps the regime decision for every income type, not just the standard salaried case.
• New vs Old Tax Regime 2026: The Breakeven Analysis for Salaried Employees — If your deductions exceed ₹4.75 lakh, the old regime wins. Below that, the new regime is simpler and cheaper. The exact calculation with examples.
• New HRA Rule 2026: 4 Cities Added to the 50% Exemption List — Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Pune, and Ahmedabad move from 40% to 50% HRA exemption from FY 2026-27 under the draft Income-tax Rules, 2026 — but only if you stay in the old regime and file for the right year.
• Home Loan Tax Benefits 2026: What Section 24 and 80C Actually Let You Claim (Old vs New Regime) — A home loan can shave up to ₹3.5 lakh off your taxable income — but only under the old regime, and only if you know the ₹2 lakh interest cap, the 5-year 80C clawback, and which deductions vanish entirely under the new regime.
• Standard Deduction 2026: ₹75,000 New Regime vs ₹50,000 Old Regime — What Salaried Employees and Pensioners Actually Get — Every salaried employee and pensioner gets a standard deduction with zero paperwork — but the new regime gives ₹75,000 while the old regime is stuck at ₹50,000, and family pensioners get a completely different, smaller number under both. Here is exactly who qualifies for what, for the return you're filing this season.
• Marginal Relief Under the New Tax Regime 2026: How the ₹12 Lakh Rebate Cliff Actually Works — Earn ₹12,00,001 in taxable income under the new regime and the Section 87A rebate disappears entirely — but that doesn't mean you owe tax on the full amount. Marginal relief caps your tax at just the amount you crossed the line by, up to roughly ₹12.7 lakh. Here's the exact math, with the point where the relief runs out.
• Leave Travel Allowance (LTA) Exemption 2026: Block-Year Rules, What Actually Counts as Travel, and Why the New Regime Kills It — LTA can wipe out tax on real travel costs — but only under the old regime, only for domestic trips, and only twice in a four-year block. Here's exactly what counts, what doesn't, and the mistakes that get claims disallowed.
• Section 24(b) on Let-Out Property 2026: No ₹2 Lakh Cap on Interest, But a Real Limit on Loss Set-Off — Rent out a financed property and Section 24(b) lets you deduct the entire home loan interest against rental income — no ₹2 lakh ceiling like a self-occupied home. But when interest outstrips rent, what happens to that loss depends entirely on which tax regime you've picked, and the difference is bigger than most landlords realize.
• Form 10-IEA 2026: The Form Business and Professional Income Filers Need to Opt for the Old Tax Regime — Salaried filers pick their tax regime with a checkbox in the ITR, every single year. Anyone with business or professional income doesn't get that luxury — opting for the old regime requires filing Form 10-IEA before the ITR itself, and missing the deadline locks you into the new regime by default.
• Income Tax Slabs for FY 2026-27 (AY 2027-28): What Budget 2026 Changed — and What It Didn’t — Every February, taxpayers brace for a new slab structure to memorise. Budget 2026 gave them nothing to memorise at all — no change to rates, no change to the basic exemption limit, in either regime. That non-event is exactly why this guide exists: to lay out, in one place, the slabs that actually apply to income you earn between April 2026 and March 2027, since the numbers you filed last year are the numbers you'll file again.
• Old vs New Tax Regime for Senior Citizens 2026: Pension, FD Interest, and Which Actually Saves More Tax — Regime comparisons are written for salaried employees with HRA and a home loan — the two levers that most often favour the old regime. Retirees usually have neither. Worked examples show the new regime winning for most senior citizens at nearly every income level, even after stacking every deduction a retiree can realistically claim.
• Can You Claim HRA and Home Loan Interest Together? The 2026 Rules for Owning a Home in One City, Renting in Another — Buy a house in your hometown on a loan, then move for work and pay rent in a metro — and it looks like you're claiming two benefits for one problem. Tax law allows exactly this combination, under the old regime, as long as the house you own and the house you rent aren't the same property.
• Own a Second House You Don't Rent Out? The Taxman Still Adds Notional Rent to Your Income (2026) — Buy a second home to keep vacant — for parents to use occasionally, or simply as an investment — and it feels like it shouldn't generate any tax at all if nobody's paying rent on it. The Income Tax Act disagrees: beyond two self-occupied houses, every additional property is taxed as though you were renting it out, whether you actually are or not.
• HRA Exemption Calculation 2026: The Least-of-Three Rule Explained With a Worked Example — Most salaried employees know HRA saves tax but couldn't calculate the exemption if asked. The formula is the least of three fixed amounts — actual HRA received, rent minus 10% of salary, and 50%/40% of salary by city — and two of the three routinely get computed off the wrong number entirely.