Professional Tax: State-Wise Rates and Due Dates

Look at your salary slip. There is a line on it called professional tax.

It is usually a small number. Often ₹200 a month.

Now move from Bengaluru to Kolkata on the same pay. The amount changes. Move to Delhi and it goes away completely.

Professional tax is not one tax. It is a different tax in every state that charges it. Each state sets its own slabs, its own forms and its own dates.

So the number on your slip is not really about you. It is about the state you work in.

Below you will find the slabs, the dates, and the one limit that applies everywhere. I have covered nine states in full, each with its own table. The rest are in one table, so you can check whether your state charges professional tax at all.

What This Guide Covers

The nine states with a full table, in the order they appear below, are Maharashtra, Karnataka, West Bengal, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Tamil Nadu, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh and Assam.

Three states charge professional tax but are missing their tables here: Kerala, Odisha and Bihar. Their own portals do not publish slabs you can rely on. I would rather leave a gap than print a number I cannot stand behind, so please take those three from your state’s own site.

What Is Professional Tax?

This section explains what the tax actually is, and why the name confuses people.

Professional tax is a tax on earning a living.

If you draw a salary, run a trade or practise a profession, your state can tax you for it. Article 276 of the Constitution gives states that power.

The name misleads people. It has nothing to do with being a professional. A machine operator pays it. So does a surgeon.

It is also not income tax. Income tax goes to the central government. Professional tax goes to your state, and in Tamil Nadu and Kerala it goes to the local municipal body.

Who Pays Professional Tax, and Who Deducts It?

This section covers who actually hands over the money, and who carries the risk if it is late.

Two groups pay it, and they pay it in two different ways.

1. Salaried people. Your employer takes it from your pay each month and sends it to the state. You do nothing. It simply shows up on the payslip.
2. Self-employed people and businesses. You pay it yourself, and usually once a year rather than every month.

Most states also ask an employer for two separate registrations. One covers the tax the business owes on itself. The other covers the tax it takes from staff. In Maharashtra these are called PTEC and PTRC, and you cannot use one in place of the other.

Did You Know? The money comes out of the employee’s salary, but the responsibility does not. If you take ₹200 from forty people and file late, the interest and the penalty land on the business. That is where a small compliance line turns into a real bill.

Why Nobody Pays More Than ₹2,500 a Year

This section explains the one rule that applies everywhere, and the odd February figure it creates on some payslips.

Article 276 of the Constitution lets states charge this tax. The same article sets a limit.

No state can take more than ₹2,500 from one person in one year. A state can build any slabs it likes below that number. It cannot go above it.

That limit explains something strange on Maharashtra and Karnataka payslips.

Both states charge ₹200 a month for eleven months. Then they charge ₹300 in February. Add it up: eleven months at ₹200 is ₹2,200, and ₹300 more makes ₹2,500 exactly.

So the February figure is not a mistake in your payroll. It is the state taking the last rupee it is allowed to take.

Professional Tax Rates, State by State

This section gives you the slabs for the nine states covered in full. Each one has its own table, and each links to the state’s own page so you can check it yourself.

1. Maharashtra Professional Tax

Maharashtra is unusual. It sets different slabs for men and women. The current schedule has applied since 1 April 2023 and comes from the state rate schedule.

Monthly salary	Men	Women
Up to ₹7,500	Nil	Nil
₹7,501 to ₹10,000	₹175 a month	Nil
₹10,001 to ₹25,000	₹200 a month, ₹300 in February	Nil
Above ₹25,000	₹200 a month, ₹300 in February	₹200 a month, ₹300 in February

If you are working out payroll costs for a business there, our guide to payroll software for Mumbai businesses covers the wider picture.

2. Karnataka Professional Tax

Karnataka is the simplest state on this list. There is one threshold and one rate.

Monthly salary	Tax
Below ₹25,000	Nil
₹25,000 and above	₹200 a month, and ₹300 in February

Payment is due by the twentieth of the following month, once you employ even one person. Registration and payment both run through the Karnataka professional tax portal.

3. West Bengal Professional Tax

West Bengal has the most detailed slabs of the seven. There are five bands, all monthly.

Monthly salary	Tax per month
Up to ₹10,000	Nil
₹10,001 to ₹15,000	₹110
₹15,001 to ₹25,000	₹130
₹25,001 to ₹40,000	₹150
Above ₹40,000	₹200

The most anyone pays here is ₹2,400 a year. The schedule and the return forms are on the West Bengal commercial tax site.

4. Andhra Pradesh Professional Tax

Andhra Pradesh uses monthly slabs, with three bands.

Monthly salary	Tax per month
Up to ₹15,000	Nil
₹15,001 to ₹20,000	₹150
Above ₹20,000	₹200

Payment and returns run through the Andhra Pradesh profession tax portal.

5. Telangana Professional Tax

Telangana kept the Andhra Pradesh Act of 1987 when it separated in 2014. The slabs are still the same in both states today.

Monthly salary	Tax per month
Up to ₹15,000	Nil
₹15,001 to ₹20,000	₹150
Above ₹20,000	₹200

The two states match right now, but they are separate laws. Check the Telangana schedule rather than assuming Andhra Pradesh still applies.

6. Tamil Nadu Professional Tax, Including Chennai

Tamil Nadu works differently from the six above. It is charged twice a year, not monthly, and the local municipal body collects it. The bands use income over six months, so the numbers look bigger.

Income per half year	Tax per half year
Up to ₹21,000	Nil
₹21,001 to ₹30,000	₹100
₹30,001 to ₹45,000	₹235
₹45,001 to ₹60,000	₹510
₹60,001 to ₹75,000	₹760
Above ₹75,000	₹1,095

The two half years run April to September and October to March. In practice the deduction comes out of the August salary for the first half and the January salary for the second. The state page lists the rates, and Chennai employers pay through the Greater Chennai Corporation.

7. Gujarat Professional Tax

Gujarat changed its slabs on 1 April 2022. The old table had five bands. The new one has two.

Monthly salary	Tax per month
Up to ₹12,000	Nil
More than ₹12,000	₹200

The tax is collected by the municipal corporation, the municipality or the district panchayat, depending on where the workplace sits.

8. Madhya Pradesh Professional Tax

Madhya Pradesh is the odd one out. Its bands are based on your salary for the whole year, not for a month.

Annual salary	Tax for the year	How it is taken
Up to ₹2,25,000	Nil	Nothing is deducted
₹2,25,001 to ₹3,00,000	₹1,500	₹125 a month
₹3,00,001 to ₹4,00,000	₹2,000	₹166 for eleven months, ₹174 in the twelfth
Above ₹4,00,000	₹2,500	₹208 for eleven months, ₹212 in the twelfth

So Madhya Pradesh uses the same trick as Maharashtra and Karnataka, just with different numbers. The last month of the year carries the remainder.

9. Assam Professional Tax

Assam has charged the same rates since 15 October 2014.

Monthly salary	Tax per month
Up to ₹10,000	Nil
Above ₹10,000 and below ₹15,000	₹150
₹15,000 and above, below ₹25,000	₹180
₹25,000 and above	₹208

The Assam tax department publishes the full schedule.

The Nine States Side by Side

This section puts all nine in one place. It uses one salary, ₹30,000 a month, so you can see how far apart the states really are.

State	Taken each month	Total for the year
Maharashtra	₹200, and ₹300 in February	₹2,500
Karnataka	₹200, and ₹300 in February	₹2,500
Assam	₹208	₹2,496
Andhra Pradesh	₹200	₹2,400
Telangana	₹200	₹2,400
Gujarat	₹200	₹2,400
Tamil Nadu	Taken twice a year, ₹1,095 each time	₹2,190
Madhya Pradesh	₹166, and ₹174 in the twelfth month	₹2,000
West Bengal	₹150	₹1,800

West Bengal is the cheapest of the nine at this salary. Maharashtra and Karnataka are the dearest. Nobody goes above ₹2,500, because nobody is allowed to.

Which States Charge Professional Tax, and Which Do Not?

This section covers every state and union territory, so you can find yours whether or not it is one of the nine above.

Professional tax is a state subject. That means some states charge it and some never have.

State or union territory	Charges professional tax	Slab table in this guide
Andaman and Nicobar Islands	No	Not applicable
Andhra Pradesh	Yes	Yes, above
Arunachal Pradesh	No	Not applicable
Assam	Yes	Yes, above
Bihar	Yes	No
Chandigarh	No	Not applicable
Chhattisgarh	Yes	No
Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Daman and Diu	No	Not applicable
Delhi	No	Not applicable
Goa	No	Not applicable
Gujarat	Yes	Yes, above
Haryana	No	Not applicable
Himachal Pradesh	No	Not applicable
Jammu and Kashmir	No	Not applicable
Jharkhand	Yes	No
Karnataka	Yes	Yes, above
Kerala	Yes	No
Ladakh	No	Not applicable
Lakshadweep	No	Not applicable
Madhya Pradesh	Yes	Yes, above
Maharashtra	Yes	Yes, above
Manipur	Yes	No
Meghalaya	Yes	No
Mizoram	Yes	No
Nagaland	Yes	No
Odisha	Yes	No
Puducherry	Yes	No
Punjab	Yes	No
Rajasthan	No	Not applicable
Sikkim	Yes	No
Tamil Nadu	Yes	Yes, above
Telangana	Yes	Yes, above
Tripura	Yes	No
Uttar Pradesh	No	Not applicable
Uttarakhand	No	Not applicable
West Bengal	Yes	Yes, above

The states that charge it but have no table above use the same kind of slab system, and all stay under the same ₹2,500 limit.

What Happens If You Employ in More Than One State?

This section is for businesses with branches in different states. It is where most of the real trouble starts.

An IT services firm with one office in Gurugram and one in Bengaluru runs two rules in the same payroll.

1. The Gurugram staff have no professional tax line at all.
2. The Bengaluru staff on ₹25,000 or more have ₹200 taken, and ₹300 in February.

The same is true for a manufacturing unit with plants in two states, or a diagnostic lab chain opening its first branch outside its home state.

Payroll stops being one rule the day the second state appears.

Professional Tax Due Dates

This section covers when you have to pay and file. Each state picks its own dates, and they do not line up with each other.

State	When it is due
Karnataka	Payment by the twentieth of the following month
West Bengal	Annual return in Form III within one month of the year ending, so by 30 April
Tamil Nadu	Twice a year, taken from the August and January salaries
Maharashtra	Monthly or annual filing, depending on the size of the liability

Two things make this harder than a fixed calendar suggests.

1. States push dates back by circular, often at short notice and often for one month only. Maharashtra does this regularly for March returns.
2. Your filing frequency can change under you. A business that files once a year can be moved to monthly filing once its liability crosses the state’s threshold.

Pro Tip: put each state’s due date in the payroll calendar, not the accounts calendar. The tax comes out during the pay run, so the deadline belongs next to payroll dates. Businesses that file it with the tax paperwork tend to notice it after salaries have already gone out.

How Do You Calculate Professional Tax on Salary?

This section walks through one example, using two branches of the same business.

The sum itself is easy. Find the slab the monthly salary falls into, then take that amount.

What makes it awkward is that the answer depends on where the person works. It does not depend on where the business is registered.

Take a diagnostic lab chain with one branch in Hyderabad and one in Kolkata. Both have a technician on ₹28,000 a month. Same job, same pay.

1. Hyderabad. ₹28,000 is above the ₹20,000 band, so the deduction is ₹200 a month. That comes to ₹2,400 for the year.
2. Kolkata. ₹28,000 falls in the ₹25,001 to ₹40,000 band, so the deduction is ₹150 a month. That comes to ₹1,800 for the year.

Two people, the same pay, ₹600 apart by the end of the year. Neither payslip is wrong.

If the same person sat in Mumbai or Bengaluru instead, the answer would be ₹2,500, because both states use the February top-up to reach the limit.

The slab reads your gross salary, so anything that changes gross pay in a month can move somebody between bands. Our salary per day calculator helps when a mid-month joiner makes the first month’s gross different from the rest.

Can You Claim Professional Tax Under the New Tax Regime?

This section answers one question people ask every year at tax time.

The short answer is no, not under the new regime.

Under the old regime, professional tax is allowed as a deduction from salary income under section 16 of the Income Tax Act. It lowers the income you are taxed on.

The new regime under section 115BAC does not allow that deduction. The tax still comes out of your salary every month, and your employer still pays it to the state. What you lose is the right to subtract it from your taxable income.

It is a small amount, so it rarely decides which regime suits you. It is still worth knowing when you compare the two, and the income tax department’s own comparison lists what each regime allows.

What Actually Goes Wrong With Professional Tax

This section is my own view, after looking at how these rules sit together.

My Opinion: professional tax is the compliance line businesses respect least. It is easy to see why. The amounts are small. The rules feel settled. Nothing breaks for years.

It stops being harmless at the second branch.

One state is a fixed number in a spreadsheet column. Two states with different rules means two slab tables, two due dates, two forms and two portals, all inside one payroll run.

The mistake I would guard against is not the rate. It is the assumption that the rate you set up on day one is still right. Karnataka moved its threshold to ₹25,000 in 2023. Any payroll still deducting below that has been taking money it should not take.

So if you have not checked your slabs against the state’s own schedule since you set payroll up, that is the job worth doing this week.

How Attendo Handles Professional Tax

This section covers how the deduction works when software runs it instead of a spreadsheet.

Attendo (formerly Petpooja Payroll) is a complete workforce management system. It runs everything from attendance at the door through to the salary that reaches the bank, in one place.

Professional tax is worked out inside the payroll run, at the rate for each branch’s own state.

It sits with the other four statutory deductions. PF, ESIC, professional tax, TDS and Labour Welfare Fund are all handled in the same run, not in four separate jobs.

For a business in one state that is a convenience. For a business in three it removes the part that actually causes errors. That part is remembering Kolkata and Chennai do not follow the Bengaluru rule.

The full feature breakdown covers how the statutory side is set up. The attendance to salary walkthrough shows where the deduction happens during the month.

Registers are a separate job from payment, and states ask for their own formats. Our statutory register formats are a reasonable place to start if you are building yours now.

Conclusion

Professional tax is small, and it is not hard. It is just not the same twice.

Get the slab right for every state you employ in. Put the due date next to payroll, not next to tax. Then check the state’s own schedule once a year, because thresholds move and nobody writes to tell you.

If you employ in more than one state, the real question is not what the rates are. It is whether your payroll picks the right one for the right person every month, without somebody having to remember.

You can see how Attendo handles statutory deductions across branches and states.

Frequently Asked Questions