The last big tax break

Rohan Deshpande is 37, and by most measures he is doing everything right. A senior product manager at an IT services company in Pune, he has an annual salary of around Rs 28 lakh, runs a steady equity SIP, keeps an emergency fund and has a growing EPF balance building in the background. He files taxes under the new tax regime. And every year, when he files his return, the same thing nags at him. The new regime has taken away almost everything he grew up hearing about – Section 80C, house rent allowance, and the health-insurance premium. Line after line that once trimmed his tax bill now reads nil. After filing this year, he came to us with a simple question: is there a deduction left that actually makes a difference for someone salaried like him? Or has he run out of options? There is one. But it is not where most people on the new regime think to look, and it has to be set up during the year, not found at filing time. The deductions the new regime kept The new regime removed almost every deduction salaried taxpayers relied on. Two survived. One is the Rs 75,000 standard deduction, which applies automatically and needs no thought. The other is the employer’s contribution to the National Pension System (NPS), and that is the one worth Ro

This article was originally published on August 20, 2026.