SalaryDecode

Updated for FY 2026-27

CTC Offer Comparison (Side-by-Side In-Hand)

Offer A
Tax regime
Offer B
Tax regime
Offer AOffer B
CTC₹12,00,000₹15,00,000
Gross cash salary₹11,55,323₹14,49,554
Income tax₹0₹89,630
Employee PF₹21,600₹21,600
Professional tax₹2,400₹2,400
Annual in-hand₹11,31,323₹13,35,924
Monthly in-hand₹94,277₹1,11,327

Monthly in-hand difference: ₹17,050

Offer B pays ₹17,050 more per month in hand.

Estimate only. Not tax or financial advice. Figures depend on your employer's exact structure — consult a CA for decisions. Updated for FY 2026-27.

Compare offers on in-hand, not on CTC

Two offer letters, two CTC figures — and the bigger number wins the conversation by default. But CTC is an employer's accounting figure, not your salary. It bundles the employer's PF contribution and a gratuity provision you will only see after five years of service, and it says nothing about the income tax, employee PF, and state professional tax that come off the top every month. The number that pays rent is monthly in-hand, and ranking offers by CTC instead of in-hand is how people accept the smaller salary while believing they took the bigger one.

This tool runs both offers through the same FY 2026-27 engine as our in-hand salary calculator — new-regime and old-regime tax with the §87A rebate and marginal relief, PF on the statutory ceiling, and professional tax for the state each job sits in — then puts the results side by side with the monthly difference in rupees. Each offer gets its own regime, state, and metro setting, because offers rarely differ only in amount: a Bengaluru offer and a Gurugram offer live under different professional-tax rules, and the regime that suits one salary level may not suit the other.

Why a higher CTC can mean a lower in-hand

It sounds impossible until you see the mechanics. Four of them, in decreasing order of impact:

  • The regime applied to each offer. Income tax is by far the largest deduction, and the regime decides it. For FY 2026-27, a ₹13,50,000 offer taxed under the old regime with nothing declared beyond PF pays ₹1,88,241 of income tax and nets ₹90,841 a month. A ₹12,75,000 offer under the new regime pays zero income tax — taxable income lands exactly on the ₹12 lakh §87A boundary — and nets ₹1,00,407 a month. The offer with ₹75,000 more CTC pays ₹9,566 a month less. Old-regime declarations (rent, §80C investments) narrow the gap, which is exactly what the per-offer regime toggle and rent field let you test.
  • The ₹12 lakh rebate cliff. Under the new regime, taxable income up to ₹12,00,000 attracts zero tax via the §87A rebate. An offer that lands just past the line is protected by marginal relief, but an offer comfortably past it pays full slab tax on the whole ladder — which is why in-hand grows much more slowly than CTC just above the threshold. Our salary hike calculator shows the same effect on a single salary moving up.
  • State professional tax. Karnataka deducts ₹200 a month; Maharashtra up to ₹2,500 a year; Delhi, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, and Rajasthan deduct nothing. Trivial against a lakh-a-month salary, decisive in a near-tie: a ₹12,72,000 Bengaluru offer nets ₹439 a year less than a ₹12,70,000 Delhi offer, because the extra ₹2,000 of CTC is smaller than Karnataka's ₹2,400 professional tax.
  • What the CTC is stuffed with. Employer PF and gratuity scale with basic pay, so an offer with a higher basic percentage routes more of its CTC into retirals and less into monthly cash. Joining bonuses, relocation allowances, and heavily back-loaded variable pay inflate the headline further while the monthly credit stays ordinary. This tool normalises both offers to a standard 40%-basic structure so the tax comparison is apples to apples; components outside that structure deserve their own line in your evaluation, at their own probability of actually being paid.

Reading the comparison table

The table shows each offer's gross cash salary, income tax, employee PF, professional tax, and the resulting annual and monthly in-hand. The delta row gives the gap between the two monthly in-hand figures, and the verdict line under it names which offer pays more. The copy summary as text button puts a plain-text version of the whole comparison on your clipboard — handy for a notes app or a message to whoever you think out loud with. The copy happens locally on your device; like everything else on this site, nothing you type here is transmitted or stored anywhere.

Two things the table deliberately does not decide for you. First, cost of living: ₹1,05,000 a month in Delhi and ₹1,00,000 in Kochi are not the same life, and no calculator knows your rent. Second, everything that is not salary — growth, team, commute, stability, ESOP odds. The tool's job is narrower: make sure the salary part of the decision uses the true monthly figures, not the CTC optics. The per-offer regime toggles above are the quickest way to see which regime suits each salary level, and once an offer is accepted, our salary hike calculator shows what the next increment on the new CTC will actually change month to month.

As with every tool on SalaryDecode, these are estimates from a standard salary structure and the FY 2026-27 rules — an employer's actual structure, a variable-pay schedule, or deductions we cannot see will move the real figures. Estimates and education only, never advice: the numbers inform the decision, you make it.

Frequently asked questions

Why can a higher CTC offer pay less in hand than a lower one?
Four mechanics can invert the ranking. First, the tax regime: an offer taxed under the old regime with little to declare pays far more tax than one under the new regime — for FY 2026-27, a ₹13,50,000 CTC under the old regime with no rent or investments declared nets ₹90,841 a month, while ₹12,75,000 under the new regime nets ₹1,00,407, because the smaller salary pays zero income tax thanks to the §87A rebate. Second, the ₹12 lakh rebate cliff itself: crossing it converts a zero-tax salary into a taxed one. Third, state professional tax: ₹2,400–₹2,500 a year in states like Karnataka and Maharashtra versus zero in Delhi or Haryana. Fourth, CTC composition: employer PF, gratuity provision, and one-time joining bonuses inflate the CTC headline without reaching your monthly bank credit.
How do I compare two job offers with different CTC structures?
Put both on the same basis: monthly in-hand after income tax, employee PF, and professional tax, computed from each offer's own state and the regime that would actually apply to it. Comparing CTC to CTC hides the differences that matter — regime, state, and how much of the CTC is retiral or one-time. This tool runs both offers through the same FY 2026-27 engine with per-offer regime, state, and metro settings, and reports the difference as a monthly rupee figure. For components the standard structure cannot capture — variable pay, ESOPs, joining bonuses with clawbacks — compare the fixed portions here and weigh the rest separately on its own terms.
Does the state I work in change my take-home salary?
Yes, through professional tax, though the effect is small. Karnataka charges ₹200 a month (₹2,400 a year), Maharashtra up to ₹2,500 a year, and Delhi, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, and Rajasthan levy none, since the constitutional cap on professional tax is ₹2,500 a year. Small as it is, it can flip a near-tie: for FY 2026-27, a ₹12,72,000 offer in Bengaluru nets ₹439 a year less than a ₹12,70,000 offer in Delhi — the ₹2,000 CTC advantage is smaller than Karnataka's ₹2,400 professional tax.
Is CTC the same as gross salary?
No. CTC (cost to company) is everything the employer spends on you; gross cash salary is the part paid to you before deductions. The gap is typically the employer's PF contribution and the gratuity provision — money that is genuinely yours but sits in retirement and long-tenure buckets, not your bank account. On a standard structure with 40% basic, roughly 2–5% of CTC never appears in monthly pay. Two offers with identical CTCs can therefore have different gross salaries if one loads more into retirals or one-time components, which is why the comparison here starts from CTC but reports gross and in-hand separately.
Which tax regime does this comparison use for each offer?
Whichever you select per offer — each side has its own new/old regime toggle, because the regime with lower tax can differ between offers. Under the new regime the tool applies the ₹75,000 standard deduction, FY 2026-27 slabs, the §87A rebate up to ₹12 lakh of taxable income, and marginal relief just above it. Under the old regime it applies the ₹50,000 standard deduction, the HRA exemption from the rent you enter, employee PF within the §80C cap, and the professional-tax deduction. The regime choice is yours to make at filing time each year; trying both toggles shows how much it moves each offer.
Is my offer data stored or sent anywhere when I use this tool?
No. The calculation runs entirely in your browser — the figures you type are never transmitted, logged, or stored, and the site sets no cookies and keeps nothing in local storage. The "copy summary as text" button writes a plain-text comparison to your device clipboard using the browser's local clipboard API; nothing about that action leaves your machine either. You can verify this from your browser's developer tools: the network tab stays silent while you type.

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