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Take-home salary is gross salary minus PF, ESI, professional tax and income tax — here's how each deduction is worked out, with an example.
Take-home salary — the number that actually lands in your bank account — is your gross salary minus a specific, ordered set of deductions. None of these deductions are optional line items you can skip past; each is either a statutory contribution or a tax withholding governed by its own rules.
It's worth being precise here: take-home salary is calculated from gross salary, not directly from CTC. Gross salary is what's left after CTC's employer-side contributions (employer PF, gratuity provisioning, employer ESI) are set aside — see the Salary vs CTC article in this series if that distinction isn't clear yet. Take-home salary removes the employee's own deductions from that gross figure.
Continuing the illustrative ₹9,00,000 CTC example from the How to Calculate CTC article, suppose gross salary works out to roughly ₹8,35,000 a year (≈ ₹69,600/month) after employer-side contributions are removed:
| Step | Amount (illustrative, monthly) |
|---|---|
| Gross salary | ₹69,600 |
Free Salary & CTC Calculator
Break down a CTC into Basic, HRA, PF, ESI, Professional Tax and Net Take-Home Pay, with an optional New Tax Regime income tax estimate — no signup required.
Is take-home salary the same as net salary?
Yes — take-home salary and net salary refer to the same figure: gross salary minus all applicable deductions, which is the amount actually credited to your bank account.
Why did my take-home salary change without a raise?
Take-home salary can change even without a CTC revision — for example, when the applicable EPF wage ceiling or ESI eligibility changes, when a new financial year's income tax slabs take effect, or when a professional tax slab you cross changes with your salary. It's worth re-checking your deductions whenever any of these change, not just when your CTC changes.
Salary & Payroll
Salary vs CTC: What's the Difference?
CTC, gross salary and take-home salary are three different numbers on the same offer letter — here's what each one actually means and why they don't match.
Salary & Payroll
PF, ESI and Professional Tax: How Salary Deductions Work
What EPF, ESI and professional tax actually are, who contributes what, and how each one reduces take-home pay — including a recent EPF wage-ceiling change.
| Less: Employee PF contribution |
| − ₹1,800 (illustrative, capped by the PF wage ceiling) |
| Less: Professional tax (state-dependent) | − ₹200 (varies by state; several states levy none) |
| Less: Income tax / TDS (estimated, spread across the year) | − ₹3,500 (depends on total taxable income and regime) |
| Net / take-home salary | ≈ ₹64,100 |
These figures are illustrative only. Employee PF is calculated on PF wages up to the applicable wage ceiling, ESI only applies within its own wage ceiling and coverage rules, professional tax depends entirely on your state, and income tax depends on your total annual income, regime choice and any exemptions/deductions you're eligible for. Use a calculator with your actual numbers rather than these examples.
Two employees with an identical CTC can end up with different take-home salaries — because their salary structures split fixed pay differently (affecting PF-eligible wages), because they work in different states (affecting professional tax), or because they've chosen different tax regimes or claimed different exemptions. Take-home is genuinely person-specific, not a fixed percentage of CTC.
For a document that shows this full breakdown for a specific employee's payroll month, a salary slip is the right output — it itemizes gross pay, each deduction, and the resulting net pay in one place.