What changed for a salaried person
The Income Tax Act, 2023 (the rules this site models for FY 2025-26 / AY 2026-27) does not give you the old separate “HRA exempt / medical exempt / conveyance exempt” story. Cash allowances sit in taxable employment income. Then one-third of that taxable employment income, or ৳5,00,000, whichever is lower, comes off. An employer car is a deemed perquisite.
The income tax calculator follows that shape. It is a planning estimate. It is not the return.
Nil slabs we use
- ৳4,00,000 male / general
- ৳4,50,000 woman or age 65+
- ৳5,25,000 third gender or disability
- ৳5,50,000 gazetted freedom fighter / July fighter
- plus ৳50,000 per disabled child in care
What you should type
Put basic and cash allowances in the taxable block. Leave duty travel and specified medical at zero unless the employer actually reimbursed those costs. If you still think house rent allowance is “exempt,” the page will disagree — that is the point.
Use payscale if you only have a grade and need a basic to start from. Use TDS for source-tax sketches on vendor bills, not for this return.
When this advice does not apply
Company tax, final TDS on some instruments, and every surcharge fact pattern are not fully modelled. If your income is mostly agricultural or you are a shareholder-director with unusual perquisites, stop here and use a practitioner. Confirm every number on the NBR form before you file.
How to walk the form without guessing
Start with who you are. That single choice sets the Nil (tax-free) amount. A man who ticks “woman” to lower tax is not using the tool the way a return works. The calculator will still compute; the return will not match.
Enter monthly cash if that is how the offer letter is written. Festival bonus and incentive stay in the yearly extras so they are not multiplied by twelve. Duty travel and specified medical stay at zero unless there is a reimbursement trail. An employer car is a deemed perquisite even if nobody called it salary.
If you only know a national pay-scale grade, estimate basic on the payscale page first, then paste that basic here. Festival extras can be sketched on festival bonus. Those pages are not the tax return either; they only stop you typing a fantasy basic.
What the result box is saying
“Income for slabs” is after employment exclusion and after house-property arithmetic. “Your tax-free” is the Nil amount for the person type you ticked, plus disabled-child extra if you entered that. “Estimated payable” already subtracts rebate and TDS you typed, and may lift to the minimum if income is above Nil and computed tax is tiny.
If payable is zero, read the hint: either you are still inside Nil, or you typed almost no income. That is not a refund claim.
Rebate is not “invest anything”
Section 78 items are capped. DPS, government securities and funds have their own ceilings on this page. The rebate itself is the lowest of a few statutory-style limits (a percentage of income, a percentage of eligible investment, a taka cap, and the tax). Typing ৳20 lakh in every box does not create a ৳20 lakh rebate.
When colleagues argue about HRA
They remember the old circulars. This FY model does not. House rent cash is taxable here. Relief is the one-third / ৳5 lakh exclusion on taxable employment income. If your employer still prints an “exempt HRA” line on a payslip, that is a payroll label, not automatically the law this calculator implements. Take the slip to whoever files the return.
Related money tools on this site
VAT splits a bill. TDS sketches withholding on a vendor invoice. EMI is a loan installment, not tax. Gratuity and pension are separation math. None of those pages file anything with NBR. Using them together does not make a complete tax file.
This article will go stale when the next finance act changes a slab. Check the year label on the calculator before you reuse a screenshot from last April.