Current professional tax slabs in Karnataka
| Monthly gross salary | Professional tax |
|---|---|
| Up to ₹24,999 | Nil |
| Above ₹24,999 | ₹200 / month |
Maximum annual professional tax in Karnataka: ₹2,400 for anyone in the top slab.
Professional tax is the small deduction near the bottom of every Bengaluru payslip — a state levy on employment that exists entirely separately from income tax. Karnataka collects it under the Karnataka Tax on Professions, Trades, Callings and Employments Act, 1976, and for salaried employees the mechanics are invisible: the employer computes it from monthly gross pay, deducts it, and remits it to the Commercial Taxes Department. The slab table above is the current schedule this site’s calculators apply.
How Karnataka’s structure works
Karnataka runs what is effectively a two-position switch rather than a ladder. Monthly gross pay below the exemption threshold attracts nothing; pay above it attracts one flat monthly amount, the same for a fresher and a CTO. The state moved to this simplified form in April 2023, when it raised the exemption limit and collapsed its older multi-slab schedule — part of a broader trend of states trading fiddly slabs for a single rate that sits just under the constitutional ceiling.
That ceiling matters more than the slabs themselves: Article 276 of the Constitution limits professional tax to ₹2,500 per person per year, a figure Parliament last revised in 1988. Every state schedule, Karnataka’s included, is drafted up against that cap, which is why the amounts look frozen in time while salaries have multiplied around them.
What it means for a salaried person
Three practical notes. First, the deduction is computed on monthly gross salary — basic plus allowances — not on CTC or on taxable income, so a raise can flip an employee from the nil band into the taxed band even when income tax stays zero. Second, professional tax paid is deductible from salary income under §16(iii) of the Income-tax Act, but only under the old regime; the new regime ignores it. Third, if you hold jobs in two states in one year, each employer deducts per its own state’s schedule for the months worked there — there is no annual reconciliation across states.
For the self-employed — doctors, consultants, traders, freelancers with an enrolment certificate — Karnataka charges an annual amount payable by 30 April each year, rather than the monthly payroll route. Employers themselves must hold a registration certificate and remit deductions by the 20th of the following month, with interest and penalties for delay; that compliance burden is the employer’s, never the employee’s.
Karnataka against its neighbours
The flat structure makes Karnataka one of the most predictable PT states. Maharashtra collects a slightly higher annual total by adding a special February instalment (covered on the Maharashtra professional tax page); Tamil Nadu and Kerala assess half-yearly on half-yearly gross; Telangana and Andhra Pradesh use graded monthly slabs; and Delhi, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, and Rajasthan levy nothing. Across a full career the differences amount to a few hundred rupees a year — but they are why the state dropdown in the in-hand salary calculator changes the monthly figure.