Section 80C explained for salaried families (2026)
- ~½ Your own EPF contribution — already deducted from your salary, often before you invest a rupee
- ~½ Left to place — PPF, ELSS, insurance, tuition, home-loan principal…
Illustrative. Read the EPF line on your payslip before buying anything.
| Return | Tax on returns | |
|---|---|---|
| EPF | ~8.25%, EPFO-declared | Tax-free, with conditions |
| PPF | ~7.1%, scheme rate | Fully tax-free (EEE) |
| Sukanya Samriddhi | ~8.2%, scheme rate | Fully tax-free (EEE) |
| ELSS | Market-linked | LTCG over ₹1.25L taxed |
| NPS (80CCD(1)) | Market-linked | Partly taxed at exit |
| Life insurance premium | Varies; term = none | Payout tax-free, with conditions |
| Tax-saver FD | Fixed, bank rate | Interest fully taxed |
| Home-loan principal, tuition | Not an investment | — |
Rates are the latest declared per EPFO and the respective small-savings notifications; small-savings rates are reviewed quarterly.
Double-counting EPF
Your own contribution already eats into the limit. Read the payslip first.
Insurance for the deduction
An endowment bought to save tax usually returns far less than PPF or ELSS. Term insurance protects; it does not need to invest.
Forgetting the regime
On the new regime none of this deducts. Run both before locking money away.
All three need the old regime.
The hard part is knowing, in March, how much of the ₹1.5 lakh you have already used across a payslip, a PPF passbook and an ELSS folio. Hundo reconciles those accounts already, so the 80C picture — what is in, what is left, what locks up when — falls out of the same ledger.
See your family’s whole picture in one ledger.
Hundo reconciles every account, watches every renewal, and keeps every document safe. Free while it is in beta.