Reference · Tax Year 2026-2027
Tax Slab Planner
See which slab you sit in, how much headroom is left, what your next rupee costs — and how much of a raise you actually keep.
The ladder
Where your income lands
| Taxable income | Base tax | Rate on excess |
|---|
Enter an income above to highlight your band.
Reading the result
Crossing a slab never costs you money
The fear that a raise can leave you worse off comes from imagining the higher rate applies to everything. It does not. Slabs are progressive: each rate applies only to the income inside its own band, so the rupee that crosses a boundary is taxed at the new rate while everything below it carries on exactly as before.
A raise of any size therefore leaves you with more, never less. What changes is how much of the extra you keep, which is the marginal rate this shows.
Headroom is the number worth watching
Knowing how much room is left in your current band is what makes this useful for planning. If a bonus would take you just past a boundary, only the part above it is taxed higher — but knowing where the line sits helps when the timing of a payment is genuinely within your control.
Effective rate and marginal rate answer different questions
The marginal rate is what your next rupee costs. The effective rate is total tax divided by total income, and it is always lower, because the lower bands are still doing their work underneath. People quoting "I'm in the 35% bracket" are usually describing a marginal rate while thinking of an effective one, and the real share of their income going to tax is considerably less.
Where this stops
This plans against the slabs. Credits and deductible allowances reduce the actual liability and are not modelled here, so treat the result as the shape of the schedule rather than as your final bill.
FAQs
Slab planner FAQs
Does moving into a higher slab tax all my income at the higher rate?
No. Each slab has a fixed base tax carried up from the bands below, plus a rate applied only to the income inside that band. Crossing a boundary raises the rate on the excess, not on everything you earn — which is why a raise never leaves you worse off under the slab schedule itself.
What is a marginal rate?
The rate charged on your next rupee of income — the rate of the slab you currently sit in. It is almost always higher than your effective rate, which is your total tax divided by your total income, because the lower bands are taxed more lightly or not at all.
Why does the raise calculator show me keeping less than the full amount?
Because the extra income is taxed at your marginal rate, and part of a large raise can spill into the next band and be taxed higher still. The figure shown is the tax on the additional income only.
What about the surcharge?
Where the schedule carries a surcharge, it is a percentage of the tax itself once income passes a threshold — so crossing that threshold can cost noticeably more than the slab rate alone suggests. The note under the ladder tells you whether it applies to you.
Is this the same as the Tax Year Comparison calculator?
No — they answer different questions. This one shows where you sit inside the current year's slabs and what your next rupee costs. The comparison calculator takes one income and runs it through every past tax year to show how the burden has shifted.
Related
How has this changed over the years?
Run the same income through every past tax year.
Open Tax Year Comparison