What is professional tax?
Professional tax is a small tax on income from employment and professions levied by state governments (not by the Centre) which is why it differs at every state border. Your employer deducts it from salary per your work state's wage slabs and remits it to that state. The Constitution caps it at ₹2,500 per person per year, so even the steepest slabs work out to roughly ₹200 a month. Several states (Delhi, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan among them) levy no professional tax at all, so a payslip there correctly shows no PT line. Where you work decides the treatment, not where your company is registered.
How the levy actually varies
Most levying states deduct monthly by slab (Karnataka, Maharashtra, West Bengal, Telangana and others); Tamil Nadu assesses half-yearly; Kerala collects through municipal local bodies. Slab amounts revise by state notification, which is why this page names patterns rather than printing figures: the current slab lives on your state's portal, or in a payroll system that maintains the map.
What it means for employees and employers
For employees: a small deduction, allowable against taxable salary under the old regime. For employers: a real compliance surface — registration in every levying state where staff work, correct slabs monthly, and treatment that follows employees when they relocate. Remote teams spread across states are where PT errors concentrate.
Why does my colleague in another city pay different professional tax?
Because PT is state law and follows the work location: a Bengaluru employee deducts on Karnataka's slab, a Gurugram colleague deducts nothing, and someone relocating between them changes treatment from the move's effect date. Same company, different states, different (and equally correct) payslips.
Go deeper: PT by state guide · Remote-team payroll · Take-home calculator
Every state’s slab, applied from the work state.
PeopleDeck runs it on every payslip — per employee, per month.
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