Form 12BB Generator — Investment Declaration

Quick answer

Form 12BB is the statement a salaried employee gives the employer to claim HRA, leave travel allowance, home-loan interest and Chapter VI-A deductions such as 80C, 80D and 80CCD(1B). The employer uses it to reduce TDS on salary. It matters mainly if you are in the old tax regime. Fill this Form 12BB generator, print or save it as PDF, sign it and hand it over with your proofs.

What Form 12BB is and why your employer asks for it

Your employer has to deduct tax from your salary every month. To do that correctly, payroll needs to know which exemptions and deductions you will claim during the year. Form 12BB is the standard format, prescribed under Rule 26C of the Income-tax Rules, in which you give that information.

Before this form existed, every company used its own declaration sheet and asked for different details. Form 12BB brought one common layout with four parts: house rent, leave travel, interest on a housing loan and Chapter VI-A deductions. Each part asks for the amount and the evidence or particulars behind it.

The form is a statement, not a tax return. You do not file it on the income tax portal. It stays with your employer, who keeps it on record and uses it to compute the TDS shown in your Form 16. If you declare nothing, payroll simply deducts tax on your full salary after the standard deduction.

Under the Income-tax Act, 2025, which applies from tax year 2026-27, sections and rules are renumbered. This page and the tool use the familiar names (Form 12BB, 80C, 80D, 24(b)) because that is how employers and Form 16 still describe them. The amounts and limits shown here follow the rules data the calculator uses.

Do you need Form 12BB in the new tax regime?

The new tax regime is the default. In it, your employer gives you the ₹75,000 standard deduction and, if your company contributes to NPS for you, the employer NPS deduction. HRA exemption, LTA exemption, home-loan interest on a self-occupied house, 80C, 80D and 80CCD(1B) are not available in the new regime.

So if you have told your employer that you want the new regime, most rows of Form 12BB have no effect on your TDS. Some employers still ask everyone to submit it, mainly to keep the records uniform. In that case you can fill zero or leave the rows blank, as your HR team prefers.

If you have chosen the old regime with your employer, Form 12BB becomes important. Every rupee of HRA, LTA, home-loan interest and deductions you declare reduces the salary on which TDS is calculated. Without the form, payroll will deduct tax as if you had no deductions at all, and you will get the extra back only after filing your return.

Not sure which regime suits you? Run your numbers in the income tax calculator first. It shows tax under both regimes side by side, which tells you whether filling Form 12BB in detail is worth your time.

The regime you tell your employer is only for TDS during the year. If you have no business income, you can still pick the other regime when you file your own return, provided you file it by the due date. So a choice made in April is not a trap. It only decides how much tax is cut from each month's salary.

A practical way to decide: add up the HRA exemption, home-loan interest and deductions you can genuinely prove. If that total is small compared with your salary, the new regime usually wins, and a blank Form 12BB is fine. If the total is large, fill the form carefully, because it can raise your take-home pay every month instead of making you wait for a refund.

How to use this Form 12BB generator, step by step

The tool runs entirely in your browser. What you type is not sent to our server, and the printed form is created on your own device. Here is what each field means.

1. Employee name — your name exactly as on your PAN card. The generator will not create the form without a name.
2. Your PAN — your 10-character PAN. The tool converts it to capital letters. PAN is also required before the form is created.
3. Your address — your current residential address. It prints next to your name in item 1 of the form.
4. Financial year — the year for which you are declaring, for example the year that started on 1 April.
5. Rent paid (yearly) — the total rent you will pay for the year, not the monthly figure. If rent is ₹22,000 a month for all 12 months, enter ₹2,64,000.
6. Landlord name & address — prints in the evidence column of the HRA row.
7. Landlord PAN — needed when the rent you pay in the year is more than ₹1 lakh. The tool prints it in capitals next to the landlord's name.
8. LTA claimed — the leave travel amount you want treated as exempt for a journey taken or planned this year. The evidence column prints "Travel bills".
9. Home-loan interest — the interest part of your EMIs for the year, from the lender's provisional or final certificate.
10. Lender name & address — your bank, housing finance company, employer or other lender.
11. 80C total — the total of your 80C items (PPF, ELSS, life insurance premium, home-loan principal, children's tuition fee and so on). Enter what you actually expect to invest.
12. 80D total — health insurance premiums and preventive health check-up for you, your family and your parents.
13. 80CCD(1B) — your own extra NPS contribution, over and above 80C.
14. Other deductions (80E, 80G…) — education-loan interest, donations and other Chapter VI-A deductions. The printed row reads "Other (80E, 80G, 80TTA …)".

Press the button and a print view opens. It shows "[See rule 26C]", your name, address, PAN and financial year, a three-column table (nature of claim, amount, evidence or particulars), and a verification paragraph with blank Place, Date and signature lines. Choose "Save as PDF" in the print dialog if your employer wants a soft copy, or print it on paper and sign.

The tool prints the amounts exactly as you type them. It does not cap them at the legal limits. That is deliberate, because some employers want the full amount declared and apply the limits themselves. If you prefer, enter only the capped amount, as explained in the limits table below.

The four parts of Form 12BB explained

1. House Rent Allowance

This row is for employees who get HRA as part of salary and live in rented accommodation. You declare the rent paid, the landlord's name and address, and the landlord's PAN when yearly rent crosses ₹1 lakh. Your employer then works out the exempt part of HRA using the rule in the next section.

Rent receipts are the usual proof. If you do not have them, our rent receipt generator makes printable monthly receipts for the same landlord and amount. A rent agreement and bank transfer records make the claim stronger.

2. Leave travel concession or assistance

LTA covers the cost of travel within India for you and your family while you are on leave. Only the actual fare is exempt, not hotel stays, food or sightseeing. The exemption is limited to the LTA amount in your salary structure.

You can claim it for two journeys in a block of four calendar years. The current block runs from 2026 to 2029. If you did not use a journey in the previous block, one journey can be carried into the first calendar year of the next block.

3. Interest on borrowing for a house

Here you declare the home-loan interest payable for the year, with the lender's name and address. For a self-occupied house, the deduction under section 24(b) is limited to ₹2 lakh a year in the old regime. Many employers also ask for the lender's PAN when the loan is from someone other than a bank, so keep it ready.

The principal part of the EMI is not declared here. It goes into the 80C total, within the overall ₹1.5 lakh limit. The home loan tax benefit calculator splits your benefit into the 24(b) and 80C parts.

4. Chapter VI-A deductions

This part lists the deductions under sections 80C, 80CCC, 80CCD and the other sections from 80D onwards. The generator has separate rows for 80C, 80D and 80CCD(1B), and one combined row for everything else. Each row has an evidence note: investment proofs, premium receipts or NPS statement.

Limits that apply to each claim (old regime)

Use this table to check your figures before you print. These limits are the ones the site's tax rules use for FY 2025-26 and FY 2026-27.

Your employee PF contribution is already known to payroll and is usually added to 80C automatically. Check your payslip so you do not count it twice. If PF alone is close to ₹1.5 lakh, extra 80C investments will not save you any more tax. The 80C and 80D deductions calculator helps you see how much room is left.

How your employer works out the HRA exemption

You declare only the rent. Your employer calculates the exempt HRA as the lowest of these three amounts for the period you lived on rent:

• The HRA you actually received.
• Rent paid minus 10% of salary.
• 50% of salary if you live in Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata or Chennai; 40% anywhere else.

For this purpose, salary means basic pay plus dearness allowance (where it counts for retirement benefits) plus any commission fixed as a percentage of turnover. Allowances such as special allowance are not included.

The rest of your HRA is taxable. If you want to see your own figure before filling the form, the HRA exemption calculator does this three-way comparison for you.

Worked example 1: HRA declaration for a Bengaluru employee

Priya works in Bengaluru. Her basic salary is ₹50,000 a month and she gets no dearness allowance. Her HRA is ₹20,000 a month. She pays rent of ₹20,000 a month to her landlord for the whole year.

• Salary for HRA: ₹50,000 × 12 = ₹6,00,000.
• HRA received: ₹20,000 × 12 = ₹2,40,000.
• Rent paid minus 10% of salary: ₹2,40,000 − ₹60,000 = ₹1,80,000.
• 40% of salary (Bengaluru is not one of the four metro cities): ₹2,40,000.

The lowest of the three is ₹1,80,000, so that much HRA is exempt and ₹60,000 is taxable. In the generator, Priya enters rent paid as ₹2,40,000. Because this is more than ₹1 lakh, she also enters her landlord's PAN.

Now say Priya also invests ₹1,50,000 under 80C and pays ₹25,000 health insurance premium for herself. Her total salary is ₹12,00,000. In the old regime, her taxable income is ₹12,00,000 − ₹50,000 standard deduction − ₹1,80,000 HRA − ₹1,50,000 − ₹25,000 = ₹7,95,000. Tax on slabs is ₹71,500, plus 4% cess of ₹2,860, which gives ₹74,360.

In the new regime, her taxable income is ₹12,00,000 − ₹75,000 = ₹11,25,000. That is within ₹12 lakh, so the 87A rebate wipes out the full slab tax of ₹52,500. Her tax is nil. For Priya, the new regime is clearly better, and Form 12BB makes no difference to her TDS.

Worked example 2: when a detailed Form 12BB pays off

Rahul earns a salary of ₹24,00,000 in Mumbai. His basic pay is ₹80,000 a month (₹9,60,000 a year) and HRA is ₹40,000 a month (₹4,80,000 a year). He pays rent of ₹40,000 a month. He also has a home loan on a house in his home town, where his parents live, and he cannot occupy it because his job is in Mumbai.

His HRA exemption is the lowest of ₹4,80,000 (received), ₹4,80,000 − ₹96,000 = ₹3,84,000 (rent minus 10%), and ₹4,80,000 (50% of salary). So ₹3,84,000 is exempt.

His other declarations are ₹1,50,000 under 80C, ₹75,000 under 80D (₹25,000 for himself and ₹50,000 for senior-citizen parents), ₹50,000 under 80CCD(1B), ₹1,20,000 education-loan interest under 80E, and ₹2,00,000 home-loan interest under 24(b). The total is ₹9,79,000.

Here the old regime saves Rahul ₹59,750 for the year, and only if he submits Form 12BB will his monthly TDS fall to about ₹19,400. Without it, payroll in the old regime would tax ₹23,50,000 and deduct about ₹5,38,200 for the year, which he could recover only through a refund after filing.

Notice what happens without the home-loan interest. His claims drop to ₹7,79,000, his old-regime tax becomes ₹2,95,150, and the new regime at ₹2,92,500 is cheaper again by ₹2,650. The break-even point is high. Check both regimes before you fill the form in detail.

Proofs to keep ready

Most employers collect Form 12BB twice: once as a plan at the start of the year, and again with proofs towards the end. Keep these documents in one folder so the second round is quick.

• HRA — rent receipts for each month or quarter, rent agreement, landlord's PAN (or a declaration from the landlord if they do not have one), and bank or UPI records of the payments.
• LTA — tickets or boarding passes for the journey, invoices from the airline, railway or bus operator, and proof of leave. Some employers ask for tickets of family members too.
• Home loan — the lender's interest certificate showing interest and principal separately, and the possession or completion certificate if construction has just finished.
• 80C — PPF passbook or statement, ELSS statements, life insurance premium receipts, tuition fee receipts (fee only, not development or transport charges), and Sukanya Samriddhi deposits.
• 80D — premium receipts showing the insured persons and the payment mode. Premium paid in cash is not allowed; a preventive check-up can be paid in cash.
• 80CCD(1B) — NPS Tier I transaction statement for your own voluntary contribution.
• Others — education-loan interest certificate (80E), donation receipts with the trust's 80G details, and so on.

Special situations

Rent paid to parents

You can pay rent to your parents if the house is owned by them and you actually pay the rent. Your parent must show this rent as income in their own return. Rent to a spouse is generally not accepted for HRA, because it looks like a family arrangement rather than a real tenancy.

Changed jobs during the year

Give Form 12BB to your new employer as well, and declare only claims that the new employer should consider. Also give them details of the salary and TDS from your previous job, so that the new employer does not apply the lower slabs twice. Many job changers still end up with a mismatch, which is settled when you file your return.

Both HRA and home-loan interest

You can claim both in the same year if there is a real reason, such as owning a house in another city while working on rent where your job is. Claiming both for houses in the same city invites questions, so keep a written reason and supporting documents.

Joint home loan

Each co-borrower who is also a co-owner can claim interest in their own share, each up to the ₹2 lakh limit for a self-occupied house. Declare only your share in your Form 12BB and keep the certificate showing both names.

Employer NPS contribution

Your employer's contribution to NPS for you is handled by payroll under section 80CCD(2), and it is allowed in both regimes. You do not need to declare it in Form 12BB. The NPS tax benefit calculator shows how your own and your employer's contributions affect tax.

Common mistakes that cause trouble later

• Monthly rent in the yearly box. The generator asks for yearly rent. Entering ₹20,000 instead of ₹2,40,000 means your employer will give you almost no HRA exemption.
• Skipping landlord PAN. When yearly rent is above ₹1 lakh and PAN is missing, many employers refuse the HRA claim altogether.
• Counting PF twice in 80C. Payroll already adds your PF. Enter only your other 80C items if your HR team asks for "other 80C".
• Declaring more than you invest. If proofs do not match by year end, the employer deducts the shortfall tax in the last few months, which can shrink your take-home sharply.
• Claiming LTA for a foreign trip. Only travel within India qualifies.
• Choosing the old regime without checking. As example 2 shows, even large deductions may not beat the new regime.
• Not signing. The verification paragraph must carry your signature, place and date. An unsigned form is usually returned.

A false declaration does not become right because the employer accepted it. The claim shows in your Form 16, and the department can question it later, with tax, interest and possibly a penalty for misreporting.

What happens if you missed declaring something

Forgot to submit a proof, or invested after your employer's cut-off date? You can still claim the deduction in your income tax return, as long as the claim is genuine and allowed in the regime you choose. The extra TDS then comes back to you as a refund after the return is processed.

There is one condition salaried people often miss. If you want the old regime and you have no business income, you must choose it in a return filed on or before the due date. A belated return is taxed under the new regime. So if your Form 12BB claims were not fully reflected in Form 16, file on time.

To see how much might come back, try the refund estimator. It compares your tax under both regimes with the TDS already deducted.

How Form 12BB connects to Form 16 and your ITR

At the end of the year, your employer issues Form 16. Part B of it shows your gross salary, the exemptions allowed (like HRA and LTA), the deductions considered and the tax deducted. Those figures come from what you declared in Form 12BB and proved later.

When you file your return, the salary schedule is usually pre-filled from your employer's TDS statement. Compare it with Form 16. If your employer allowed less than you are entitled to, you can claim the correct amount in the return, with your own proofs on file. If your employer allowed more than you can support, correct it in the return to avoid a notice later.

Keep the signed Form 12BB and all proofs for several years. If the department asks about an HRA or deduction claim, these are the documents you will show.

You can check your TDS and other details on the official income tax e-filing portal under AIS and Form 26AS before you file.

Get it checked by an expert

Unsure whether to declare in the old regime, or how much HRA and home-loan interest you can really claim? A TaxCaller expert can review your Form 12BB figures, compare both regimes on your actual salary, and later file your return so that every valid claim is included. The fee is told to you upfront before any work starts, and the first call is free. See our income tax filing service for details.