Income tax calculator in Excel for FY 2026-27 (free)

Most income tax Excel files passed around on WhatsApp and forums are last year's, still carry the old slabs, or hide the whole working inside one long formula you cannot check. This one is built for FY 2026-27 (AY 2027-28), puts every slab on its own row so you can see where each rupee of tax comes from, and was checked against our online income tax calculator at six different salaries before we published it.

What the sheet does

• Works out your tax under the new and the old regime side by side, and says which one is cheaper and by how much.
• New regime: ₹75,000 standard deduction, slabs from 5% to 30% starting above ₹4 lakh, the section 87A rebate up to ₹12 lakh of taxable income, and marginal relief just above it.
• Old regime: ₹50,000 standard deduction, the age-wise basic exemption (below 60, 60 to 79, 80 and above), and the usual deductions: 80C, 80D, HRA, home-loan interest and NPS under 80CCD(1B), each capped where the law caps it.
• Surcharge by income band, and the 4% health and education cess, in both regimes.
• A plain .xlsx with live formulas and no macros. It opens in Excel, Google Sheets and LibreOffice, and it is licensed CC BY 4.0, so you can share or adapt it with credit.

How to use it (about three minutes)

• Type your gross salary into the first yellow cell, from Form 16 or by adding up your payslips. Gross, not CTC: the employer's PF contribution and gratuity sit inside your CTC but are not salary income.
• Add other income such as FD or savings interest. It gets no standard deduction.
• Fill the old-regime deductions only if you actually have them. The new regime ignores them anyway.
• Read the verdict line under the two totals, then scroll to row 32 to see the slab-by-slab working for both regimes.

Three salaries, worked through

With the sheet's default old-regime deductions (₹1.5 lakh under 80C, ₹25,000 under 80D, nothing else), for a salaried resident below 60:

• ₹12.75 lakh gross: new regime ₹0, because taxable income lands exactly on ₹12 lakh. Old regime ₹1,32,600.
• ₹13 lakh gross: new regime ₹26,000 after marginal relief. Without the relief the slab maths would say ₹66,300. Old regime ₹1,40,400.
• ₹18 lakh gross: new regime ₹1,50,800. Old regime ₹2,96,400.

The ₹13 lakh line is where most home-made spreadsheets go wrong. Taxable income is ₹12.25 lakh, ₹25,000 over the rebate limit, and the slabs produce ₹63,750 of tax. Marginal relief says the tax cannot be more than the income above ₹12 lakh, so it is ₹25,000 plus cess. A sheet without that cap overstates the bill by about ₹40,000.

When does the old regime cost less?

Getting past ₹5 lakh of deductions usually takes HRA and home-loan interest on top of a full 80C. If you pay rent in a metro, or pay a home-loan EMI, type your real numbers in and let the sheet decide. If you have neither, the verdict line will usually point the same way for you.

What the sheet does not do

• Capital gains on shares, mutual funds or property, which are taxed at their own special rates. Use the capital gains calculator for those.
• Marginal relief on surcharge just above ₹50 lakh and ₹1 crore. If your income sits right above either line, check that part by hand.
• Business or professional income, rent from a second house, or agricultural income.
• Non-residents: the sheet assumes a resident individual, and NRIs do not get the 87A rebate.

For anything outside that list, the online income tax calculator applies the same FY 2026-27 rules and is updated after every Budget. The spreadsheet is for when you want to keep a copy, play with numbers offline, or show your working to someone else.