Find your net take-home salary from your gross salary.
Deductions are subtracted from the gross salary figure to arrive at net.
Net salary: Gross − (employee PF + professional tax)
Gross salary and net salary are the two numbers people mix up most in Indian payroll. Gross is everything the employer pays you before your own deductions come off. Net is what remains after those deductions. This calculator starts from your CTC, strips out the employer-side costs to reach gross, and then removes the two deductions that almost every salaried employee sees on a payslip: the employee's PF contribution and professional tax.
The result is net pay before income tax. It is the right number when you want to see how statutory deductions eat into gross pay, when you check a payslip line by line, or when you want a pre-tax base to which you then apply your own TDS estimate. People use it after an appraisal, before signing an offer, and when a bank asks for net monthly income on a loan form.
1. Start with annual CTC and work out basic: Basic = CTC × basic% ÷ 100.
2. Remove employer-only costs to reach gross: Gross = CTC − (Basic × PF rate ÷ 100) − (Basic × 15 ÷ 26 ÷ 12).
3. Work out your own PF deduction: Employee PF = Basic × PF rate ÷ 100.
4. Work out annual professional tax: PT = monthly PT × 12.
5. Net salary before income tax = Gross − Employee PF − PT.
6. Divide by 12 for the monthly figure, then subtract your monthly TDS separately if you want the final bank credit.
CTC counts money the employer spends on your behalf. The employer's 12% PF goes straight to your EPF account, and the gratuity provision sits with the employer until you leave. Neither appears as earnings on your payslip. Gross salary is what the payslip shows under earnings: basic, HRA, special allowance and other cash allowances. So the first subtraction, from CTC to gross, is not a deduction from your pay at all. It simply removes costs that were never part of your monthly earnings in the first place.
PF appears on both sides. The employer contributes 12% of basic, which is inside CTC but outside gross. You also contribute 12% of basic, which is inside gross and deducted from it. For a basic of ₹6,00,000 a year, that is ₹72,000 from each side, so ₹1,44,000 goes into your provident fund while your net pay drops by only your own ₹72,000. Both halves are still your savings, which is why net salary understates your total annual gain from the job.
The calculator deliberately stops before income tax. TDS depends on your regime choice, investments, rent paid, other income and the year's slabs, so a single number cannot be right for everyone. It also ignores voluntary PF, labour welfare fund, meal card recoveries, insurance premiums and loan recoveries that some employers deduct. Treat the output as net of statutory PF and professional tax only. Then use the income tax calculator for TDS and subtract other employer-specific deductions from your own payslip.
Karthik is moving to a Chennai role with an annual CTC of ₹18,00,000. The offer sets basic at 45% of CTC, HRA at 50% of basic, PF at 12% and professional tax at ₹200 a month.
Answer: Net (take-home) annual salary ₹15,64,258; Gross salary ₹16,63,858; Total deductions ₹99,600
Taking the net figure as the bank credit and forgetting that monthly TDS still comes off it.
Subtracting employer PF from gross again, which counts it as a deduction twice.
Using a gross figure from a friend's payslip without checking whether their employer caps PF at ₹15,000 of wages.
Forgetting that professional tax is zero in states that do not levy it, and that some states collect a higher amount in one month.
Quoting gross salary as monthly income on a rental or loan form when the lender asks for net.
Checking each deduction line on a payslip against expected values.
Getting a pre-tax net figure to feed into your own income tax and budget calculations.
Seeing how much a change in the basic percentage reduces cash through higher PF.
Filling in net monthly income on a home loan or personal loan application.
What's the difference between gross and CTC?
CTC includes costs paid by your employer (like employer PF) that never reach your bank account. Gross salary is your CTC minus those employer costs — it is closer to your final take-home pay, but still higher than it.