State PT, deducted to the rupee. deducted
All 19 Indian states that levy Professional Tax under Article 276 — Maharashtra's ₹200/₹300 February rule, Karnataka's women-below-₹25,000 exemption, Tamil Nadu's half-yearly cycle, West Bengal Form III. Set the slab once, and every payslip from next month onwards has the right deduction without an accountant touching it.
How most Indian schools handle Professional Tax today
On the 25th of every month, the office accountant at a Pune CBSE school opens the salary Excel and starts editing the PT column by hand. ₹200 for most teachers. ₹300 for the senior PGT in February (because Maharashtra collects ₹2,500/year as ₹200 × 11 + ₹300 in February). ₹0 for the office girl earning ₹6,800 (below the ₹7,500 Maharashtra threshold). She copies last year's logic from another sheet, hopes she got the slab right, and emails the file to the principal.
In April, the auditor finds three issues. The new Hindi teacher who joined in November was on the wrong slab. The drawing teacher who crossed ₹10,000 in December stayed at ₹175. And the PT challan filed for February showed ₹200 for everyone — no one in the office knew about the Maharashtra Feb-300 rule. Two penalty notices later, the principal asks: 'Why are we doing this manually in 2026?'
Professional Tax is collected under Article 276 of the Constitution and capped at ₹2,500 per year per employee. But the way it gets there is different in every state — Maharashtra has the February split, Karnataka exempts women earning under ₹25,000, Tamil Nadu collects in two half-yearly tranches in April and October, West Bengal needs Form III monthly. A school in Pune cannot use Bengaluru's logic, and a school with branches in three states needs all three. Inkwelly's Professional Tax Slab configurator solves this once.
What Inkwelly's PT Slab configurator does
The office accountant opens Employee Payroll → Settings → PT Slabs once at the start of the financial year. She picks the state from a dropdown that lists all 19 PT-levying states — Maharashtra (MH), Karnataka (KA), Gujarat (GJ), Tamil Nadu (TN), West Bengal (WB), Andhra Pradesh (AP), Telangana (TS), Madhya Pradesh (MP), Kerala (KL), Bihar (BR), Odisha (OR), Jharkhand (JH), Chhattisgarh (CG), Assam (AS), plus the four that don't levy but are kept selectable for consistency (Delhi, Rajasthan, UP, Haryana, Punjab — for schools that prefer a unified config).
For each state she enters one slab row at a time: a salary band (Min Salary and Max Salary), the Monthly Amount, an optional February Amount for the Maharashtra rule, the Effective From date, and an optional Effective To for slab transitions. If the state collects half-yearly (Tamil Nadu, parts of West Bengal), she ticks Is Half-Yearly and enters a single Half-Yearly Amount instead. If the state has a women-exemption rule (Karnataka), she enters Women Exempt Limit — say ₹25,000 — and the system automatically zeroes out PT for women earning below that cap.
That's it. From the next payrun onwards, every employee on every payroll across every school in the org gets the right state PT. The accountant never touches the PT column on a payslip again. The amount appears on each payslip with componentCode: 'PT', on the Form 24Q quarterly TDS return (because PT is deductible under Section 16(iii) of the Income Tax Act), and on the year-end Form 16 — auto-reconciled, no manual entry.
What's covered out of the box
- All 19 PT-levying states pre-loaded as dropdown — no hunting state codes (MH, KA, GJ, TN, WB, AP, TS, UP, RJ, MP, KL, PB, HR, BR, OR, JH, CG, AS)
- Maharashtra ₹200/₹300 February split — the only state where the February amount differs; encoded as a separate
februaryAmountfield, applied automatically only in February payruns - Karnataka women-exemption —
womenExemptLimitfield; women earning below ₹25,000 get ₹0 PT under the Karnataka Tax on Professions Act 1976 - Tamil Nadu half-yearly cycle — toggle
isHalfYearlyand enter one half-yearly amount; system bills the employee in April and October per TN Panchayats / Municipalities PT rules - West Bengal Form III monthly — supports the WB slab structure with separate slabs for ₹10,001–₹15,000, ₹15,001–₹25,000, ₹25,001–₹40,000, and above ₹40,000
- Salary band overlap detection — if you accidentally create a slab from ₹7,501–₹10,000 when one already exists from ₹5,000–₹12,000, the system rejects with
SALARY_RANGE_OVERLAPbefore save - Effective-date versioning — when a state revises its slabs (Maharashtra changed in April 2024), close the old slab with
effectiveToand add a new one; payruns automatically use the right slab based on payDate - Soft-delete protection — slabs already used in posted payslips can never be hard-deleted; the system flags
deactivated (soft deleted) as it is referenced in payroll recordsand keeps the audit trail - Org-scoped, school-aware — one config powers all schools in your org, but each school's payrun resolves PT against the school's registered state
- Section 16(iii) IT linkage — every PT deduction flows automatically to Form 16 box 3 (deduction under Section 16) and to Form 24Q quarterly TDS without re-entry
See it in action
Maharashtra — the Feb-300 rule, encoded
Maharashtra is the only Indian state where the February PT differs from every other month. Under the Maharashtra State Tax on Professions, Trades, Callings and Employments Act 1975, employers collect ₹200/month for 11 months and ₹300 in February — totalling the ₹2,500 annual cap allowed by Article 276. Most ERPs we replace either skip the February rule (under-deducting ₹100/employee/year, which the auditor catches) or hard-code it in code (and break when Maharashtra revises rates).
Inkwelly handles this at the data layer. Each Maharashtra slab has both monthlyAmount and februaryAmount. When the March payrun runs (which pays for February's work), the engine reads the slab, sees februaryAmount: 300, and deducts ₹300 from the senior PGT's payslip — without anyone in the office remembering the rule. The principal can audit the logic instantly: open the slab row, see ₹200 / ₹300 spelled out.
Karnataka — women-below-₹25,000 exemption, declarative
The Karnataka Tax on Professions, Trades, Callings and Employments Act 1976 exempts women employees earning under ₹25,000/month from PT — a real exemption that costs schools time when handled manually (the office has to filter female staff, check salary, zero the PT column, and prove it to the auditor with a women's roster).
In Inkwelly, the Karnataka slab has a womenExemptLimit field. Set it to ₹25,000 once. From the next payrun, every female employee earning below ₹25,000 gets ₹0 PT automatically; the audit log shows the exemption applied with the slab ID and the gender field on the employee profile. A Bengaluru school with 18 female teachers under the cap saves ₹2,150 per teacher per year — and saves the office 30 minutes a month.
Tamil Nadu — half-yearly billing, no calendar maths
Tamil Nadu PT is collected by the panchayat or municipality — not the state — and billed twice a year, in April and October. The amount depends on the half-year salary band, not monthly. A Coimbatore school's payrun cannot deduct ₹208/month like Maharashtra; it must withhold a lump sum twice a year per slab.
Flick isHalfYearly to true on the TN slab and enter halfYearlyAmount. Inkwelly's payrun engine doesn't deduct PT in any month except April and October — and in those months, deducts the half-yearly figure from the running gross. The challan generator outputs the panchayat-format Form 1 with the half-yearly figure pre-filled. No accountant decisions, no spreadsheet acrobatics.
Multi-state schools — one config, three states, zero overlap
A growing school chain with branches in Pune, Bengaluru, and Coimbatore needs three different PT regimes simultaneously. Most ERPs force you to pick one state per organisation; Inkwelly is org-scoped at the slab level but state-resolved at payrun time. You configure all three states in one screen — Maharashtra with Feb-300, Karnataka with women-exempt, Tamil Nadu with half-yearly — and the payrun for each branch reads the school's registered state automatically.
The system also blocks overlap mistakes. If you try to add a Maharashtra slab from ₹7,501–₹10,000 when one already covers ₹5,000–₹12,000, the validator returns SALARY_RANGE_OVERLAP before save. No silent corruption. Every change is timestamped and tied to a user — so if the auditor asks 'who set the women-exempt limit to ₹25,000?', you have an answer in the audit log.
“Pehle har mahine PT column manually edit karte the. Maharashtra ke teen branches ke liye alag-alag rules yaad rakhte the. Ab slab ek baar set kiya, March payrun mein automatically Feb-300 lag gaya. Auditor ko 30 second mein dikha diya.”
Real-world use cases — five scenarios that actually happen in Indian schools
1. Maharashtra senior teacher crosses the ₹10,000 band in December. The drawing teacher gets a 12% increment in December that pushes her to ₹10,200 gross. From the December payrun onwards, Inkwelly auto-applies the ₹200/₹300 slab instead of the ₹175 slab — no edits needed. In February, she's deducted ₹300 automatically; March payslip resumes ₹200.
2. New PGT joins a Karnataka school mid-year. A Bengaluru school hires a male PGT at ₹62,000/month in October. His PT auto-deducts ₹200/month from October onwards (Karnataka top slab). His Form 16 at year-end shows the prorated ₹1,200 under Section 16(iii). No re-entry, no slab guessing.
3. Tamil Nadu school's October half-yearly run. The Madurai school's October payrun carries the half-yearly PT for all 38 staff in one shot. The challan exports as a panchayat-format CSV. The April challan was already paid; the system shows both as 'closed' in the audit log.
4. School chain expands from Maharashtra to Karnataka. A Pune school opens a Bengaluru branch in April-2026. The accountant adds a Karnataka slab with women-exempt-₹25,000. From May, Bengaluru staff get Karnataka PT, Pune staff continue on Maharashtra PT. No re-implementation, no consultant call.
5. State revises slab rates mid-financial-year.
Maharashtra revises rates effective 1 July 2026. The accountant sets effectiveTo: 2026-06-30 on the old slab and adds a new slab from 2026-07-01. Junes payrun uses old rates; July's uses new. February-2027's run reads the new slab — and applies the new February amount.
Common operations the office runs every month
- Set up a new state slab — one dropdown, three numbers, one date
- Edit an existing slab — opens the same dialog, all fields editable except those locked by posted payslips
- Soft-delete an old slab — preserves audit trail, prevents new payruns from picking it up
- Search by state name ("Maharashtra") or slab name ("Senior Band") — debounced 500ms
- Filter by active-only or inactive-only to clean up FY-end
- Paginate 20 slabs per page when you have multi-state, multi-FY history
- Export the FY's slab history as a CSV for the auditor
- Drill into a slab to see the audit trail — who created, when last edited
- Override the slab on a single payslip in rare cases — the override is logged
- Roll forward slabs to the next FY in one click — copies the active set, you only edit changes
See PT Slabs configured for your state in 20 minutes
Demo with your actual state's rules — Maharashtra, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, or any of the 19. We pre-load the slab rates so you can see your March payrun before you commit.
Limits, safety, and the small print
PT is org-scoped, not school-scoped — you configure once for the whole organisation, and each school's payrun resolves to the slab that matches the school's registered state. This is by design: most groups have a single accountant managing PT across branches, and per-school PT configurations create more drift than they prevent.
Slabs use effective-date versioning. When a state revises rates (Maharashtra has done so twice in the past five years), you don't edit the old slab — you set effectiveTo on the old one and create a new slab from the rate-change date. Payruns always read the slab whose effective period contains the payDate. Re-running an old payrun gives the same answer; running this month's payrun uses the new slab. No retroactive edits, no audit drift.
Soft-delete is enforced by the backend, not the UI. If the slab has been used in even one posted payslip, the system returns deleteType: 'soft' and sets isActive=false — never 'hard'. This is the difference between 'I want this slab gone' (UX request) and 'this slab can be safely removed from history' (audit reality). The auditor will always see the slab that was active when the payslip was posted.
The Maharashtra februaryAmount field is the only state-specific quirk in the schema — every other state uses just monthlyAmount or halfYearlyAmount. Karnataka's women-exemption is a separate field (womenExemptLimit) so it doesn't pollute non-Karnataka slabs. The 19-state dropdown is closed (/^[A-Z]{2,3}$/) so you can't accidentally enter 'KARN' or 'MAH' — only the official 2–3 letter ISO-style codes.
For schools whose state doesn't levy PT (Delhi, Haryana, Punjab — full list under Article 276), simply don't create a slab for that state. The payrun will skip the PT line item entirely and Form 16 will show ₹0 under Section 16(iii) PT. There's no penalty for not having a slab; only for having a wrong one.
किस मॉड्यूल का हिस्सा
1 moduleअक्सर पूछे गए सवाल
8 सवालDoes Inkwelly support all 19 Indian states that levy Professional Tax?
Yes. The state dropdown lists Maharashtra, Karnataka, Gujarat, Tamil Nadu, West Bengal, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Madhya Pradesh, Kerala, Bihar, Odisha, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Assam, plus Delhi, Rajasthan, UP, Haryana, and Punjab (kept for org-consistency even though they don't levy PT). Each state's specific rules — Maharashtra Feb-300, Karnataka women-exempt, Tamil Nadu half-yearly — are encoded as fields, not hard-coded.
How do you handle Maharashtra's ₹200/₹300 February rule?
Each Maharashtra slab has two fields: `monthlyAmount` (e.g., ₹200) and `februaryAmount` (e.g., ₹300). When the engine processes a February payrun, it reads `februaryAmount` instead of `monthlyAmount` — automatically. You set the rule once on the slab; every February payrun thereafter applies it without anyone in the office remembering.
What about the Karnataka women-below-₹25,000 exemption?
Karnataka slabs have a `womenExemptLimit` field. Set it to ₹25,000. The payrun engine then zeroes PT for any female employee earning below that cap, automatically. The exemption is logged on the payslip's audit trail with the slab ID, so auditors can verify the rule was applied correctly.
Can a school chain operating in 3 states use one PT configuration?
Yes. PT slabs are org-scoped — one configuration powers every school in your organisation. Each school's payrun resolves PT against the school's registered state, so a Pune branch uses Maharashtra slabs, a Bengaluru branch uses Karnataka slabs, and a Coimbatore branch uses Tamil Nadu half-yearly slabs — from the same admin screen.
What happens if a state revises its PT rates mid-year?
You don't edit the old slab. Set `effectiveTo` on the old slab to the day before the revision, then create a new slab from the revision date. Payruns always read the slab whose effective period contains the payDate. Old payrun re-runs get the old rate; new payruns get the new rate. No retroactive edits, no audit drift.
Can I delete a slab that's already been used in payslips?
No — the backend blocks hard-delete and performs a soft-delete instead. The slab is marked `isActive=false` and stays in history with the message *'Professional tax slab deactivated (soft deleted) as it is referenced in payroll records'*. Auditors can still see the slab that was active when each historical payslip was posted.
Does PT automatically appear on Form 16 and Form 24Q?
Yes. PT is deductible under **Section 16(iii) of the Income Tax Act 1961**. Every PT deduction flows automatically to Form 16 box 3 (Deduction under Section 16) and to the Form 24Q quarterly TDS return — no re-entry. The amount on Form 16 reconciles with the sum of monthly PT deductions on payslips.
Where is PT data stored, and how long is it retained?
All PT slab data is stored on Inkwelly's Mumbai infrastructure, compliant with the DPDP Act 2023. Slabs and their audit trail are retained for 7 years (the standard payroll record retention required under most state PT acts and the Income Tax Act). Soft-deleted slabs are kept indefinitely for historical payslip references.
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