Common Tax Deductions Beyond 80C: 80D, HRA, and More

Note: this article describes deductions available under the old tax regime. See our "Old vs. New Tax Regime" article for how to decide which regime suits you.

Section 80C - the well-known one

Deduction up to ₹1.5 lakh/year for investments/expenses including PPF, ELSS mutual funds, life insurance premiums, 5-year tax-saver FDs, employee provident fund contributions, and principal repayment on a home loan.

Section 80D - health insurance premiums

A separate deduction from 80C, often under-claimed:

• Premium paid for self and family: up to ₹25,000/year if you're under 60, or ₹50,000/year if you (the policyholder) are a senior citizen.
• An additional deduction for premiums paid for parents' health insurance: up to ₹25,000/year if they're under 60, or ₹50,000/year if they're senior citizens.

Together, a taxpayer under 60 paying for their own family's cover (₹25,000) and senior-citizen parents' cover (₹50,000) can claim up to ₹75,000 combined under 80D alone - a figure most people underestimate because they only remember the smaller "self" number.

HRA (House Rent Allowance)

If your salary structure includes an HRA component and you pay rent, a portion is exempt from tax - calculated as the lowest of: actual HRA received, rent paid minus 10% of basic salary, or a fixed percentage of basic salary depending on city (metro vs. non-metro). This requires actual rent receipts/agreement as proof.

Home loan interest (Section 24)

Interest paid on a home loan for a self-occupied property is deductible up to ₹2 lakh/year, separate from the 80C principal-repayment deduction - meaning a home loan can contribute to tax savings through two different sections simultaneously. (For a rented-out property, there's no cap at all on the interest deduction - the full amount is deductible regardless of regime.)

One more often-missed deduction: NPS

Beyond 80C's ₹1.5 lakh, Section 80CCD(1B) allows an additional ₹50,000 deduction for your own contributions to NPS - on top of, not instead of, your 80C limit. Like everything else on this page, it's old-regime only.

The practical takeaway

Most people remember 80C and stop there. Reviewing 80D, HRA, home loan interest, and NPS's extra ₹50,000 before filing often reveals deductions that were sitting unclaimed.

(Figures above checked against current sources as of September 2026 - FY 2026-27/AY 2027-28. All deductions on this page apply to the old regime only - see our "Old vs. New Tax Regime" article.)

(Section numbers used here - 80C, 80D, Section 24, 80CCD(1B) - are the familiar Income-tax Act, 1961 numbers. The Income-tax Act, 2025 replaced the 1961 Act from 1 April 2026 and renumbered these (80C is now Section 123, 80D is now Section 126); the deduction amounts themselves are unchanged. See our "Old vs. New Tax Regime" article for more on this renumbering.)