ELSS calculator
What does a tax-saving fund return after 80C and after LTCG?
Per month on SIP, once on one-time. ₹12,500 a month is exactly the ₹1.5 L that 80C allows.
ELSS locks in for 3 years — that is the floor on this slider, not a preference.
The marginal rate 80C saves you. Only the old regime has 80C at all.
₹10,11,570in hand after 5 years
- You put in
- ₹7,50,000
- Gains
- ₹2,81,080
- Tax saved
- ₹46,800
- LTCG on redemption
- ₹19,510
3-year lock-in on every instalment. 80C exists only in the old regime — under the new one this saves no tax at all. FY 2025-26: ₹1.5 L 80C cap, ₹1.25 L of long-term gains exempt, 12.5% above it. Tax saved is one year of deduction; the LTCG line assumes the whole holding is redeemed on the last day.
- Invested
- Gains
| Year | Invested | Gains | Value |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | ₹1,50,000 | ₹10,117 | ₹1,60,117 |
| 2 | ₹3,00,000 | ₹40,540 | ₹3,40,540 |
| 3 | ₹4,50,000 | ₹93,846 | ₹5,43,846 |
| 4 | ₹6,00,000 | ₹1,72,935 | ₹7,72,935 |
| 5 | ₹7,50,000 | ₹2,81,080 | ₹10,31,080 |
Two questions hide inside "how much will my ELSS give me". The first is what the units grow to — ordinary equity compounding, no different from any other fund. The second is what you keep: a deduction that cuts this year's tax bill, then a capital gains bill on the way out three or more years later. This works both ends, so the headline is money in hand after tax, not the fund's maturity value.
A worked example
Take the default case: a ₹12,500 monthly SIP — exactly the ₹1.5 lakh a year that section 80C allows — held for 5 years, at an assumed 12% a year, by someone whose marginal rate is the 30% slab.
Over the five years you pay in ₹7,50,000. At 12% that grows to ₹10,31,080, so the gains are ₹2,81,080. Redeem the lot on one date and ₹1.25 lakh of that gain is exempt; the remaining ₹1,56,080 is taxed at 12.5%, a bill of ₹19,510. What reaches your bank account is ₹10,11,570.
Separately, each year’s ₹1.5 lakh of investment cuts that year’s tax by ₹46,800 — 30% plus the 4% cess. That is a genuine ₹46,800 a year, but it is not part of the ₹10,11,570 above: it never enters the fund, it just doesn’t leave your salary. Add it back only if you are honest about where it went.
Bars run from the plan's first instalment: each instalment's units carry their own three-year clock under the Equity Linked Savings Scheme, 2005, so the value on each row is the year that instalment becomes free to redeem. The figures above assume a single exit date — a five-year SIP is not fully liquid until year eight.
What this number does not account for
The 80C saving may already be spent
EPF, insurance premiums, home loan principal and tuition fees all draw on the same ₹1.5 lakh ceiling. The tax-saved figure assumes your ELSS fills empty space in it.
One year of deduction, not five
Tax saved is a per-year figure. A five-year SIP claims it in each of the five years, but only while the ceiling has room and only while you file under the old regime.
12% is your assumption
ELSS holds equity. There is no declared rate the way EPF and PPF have one, no floor, and a five-year window is short enough for the market to hand you less than you paid in.
The exit bill is the pessimistic bound
It charges the whole gain above ₹1.25 lakh in one financial year. Redeem across two years and the exemption applies twice, which lowers it.
Three more things sit outside the arithmetic. Costs: the return you type is the return you assume the fund delivers, and a fund’s published NAV return is already net of its expense ratio — so if you have taken 12% from an index rather than from a fund’s own record, the real outcome is lower by roughly the expense ratio each year. A stamp duty of 0.005% also applies to every mutual fund purchase (Indian Stamp Act, as amended by the Finance Act 2019, effective 1 July 2020), and securities transaction tax is deducted on redemption of equity units. Surcharge: the 4% cess is in the tax-saved figure, but the surcharge that applies above ₹50 lakh of total income is not, so a high earner saves slightly more than shown and pays slightly more on exit. The IDCW option: this assumes a growth plan. If you hold the payout variant, the income is taxed at your slab rate as it is received, not at 12.5% at the end, and the compounding above never happens.
Finally, the deduction is a deferral of your decision, not of the tax: money you never sent to the government is money that stayed in a fund you cannot touch for three years. Whether that is a good trade depends on what you would otherwise have done with it.
Where to go next
- SIP calculator — the same instalment in a fund with no lock-in and no deduction, so you can see what the three years are buying you.
- Income tax calculator — the prior question: whether the old regime, with its deductions, beats the new one for you at all. If it does not, the ELSS tax saving above is zero.
- PPF calculator — the other habitual claimant on the same ₹1.5 lakh, at a declared rate instead of a market one, and locked for fifteen years.
Is ELSS still worth it under the new tax regime?
Not for the tax break. Section 80C is not available to anyone taxed under the new regime of section 115BAC, so the deduction — and with it the whole reason ELSS locks your money for three years — is worth nothing there. The fund itself is a perfectly ordinary equity fund; if you are on the new regime, a plain open-ended equity fund does the same job with no lock-in. Set the slab picker to match your old-regime marginal rate only if that is the regime you actually file under.
Does the three-year lock-in run from when I started the SIP?
No. Every instalment buys units that carry their own three-year clock, so the instalment you pay in the sixtieth month of a five-year SIP cannot be redeemed until the ninety-sixth. The calculator above assumes you exit everything on one date, which is the simple case; a real redemption has to be taken tranche by tranche, oldest units first.
How much tax does ELSS actually save?
Your marginal rate on whatever part of the ₹1.5 lakh section 80C ceiling this investment fills, plus the 4% health and education cess on that. At the 30% slab a full ₹1.5 lakh saves ₹46,800 for the year. The catch is the word "fills" — your EPF contribution, life insurance premiums, home loan principal, children's tuition fees and PPF all compete for the same ₹1.5 lakh, and most salaried people have used a good part of it before they buy any ELSS. The figure above assumes the whole amount is deductible.
What tax do I pay when I redeem ELSS?
Long-term capital gains on equity, under section 112A: gains above ₹1.25 lakh in a financial year are taxed at 12.5%, with no indexation. Because ELSS cannot be redeemed inside three years, an ELSS gain is always long-term — the short-term rate never applies. The exemption is per financial year and per person, so staggering a redemption across two years, or across two adults' folios, can use it twice.
Can I stop an ELSS SIP before three years?
You can stop paying at any time — stopping the SIP is not a redemption. What you cannot do is take out the units you have already bought until each one is three years old. There is no premature-exit window, no penalty clause to pay, and no loan against them the way there is against PPF: the units simply stay invested, exposed to the market, until their clock runs out.
This page starts from typical figures. In Hundo the same calculator opens on your own — the loan, the deposit, the salary already on the ledger — and says where each number came from.