CTC to In-Hand: A Complete Worked Breakdown for a ₹20L Offer

A job offer letter usually leads with one big number: your CTC. It's rarely the number that lands in your bank account. Here's exactly where a ₹20L offer actually goes, step by step.

The full breakdown

Walking through each piece

Employer PF, and gratuity provision come out of your CTC before you ever see it — they're part of what your employer spends on you, not part of your take-home. Together these came to ₹1.34L in this example.

Employee PF and Professional Tax are deducted from what's left. Employee PF (₹96K) isn't lost — it's your own retirement savings, just not accessible monthly. Professional Tax (₹2,400) is a small state-level tax most states levy on salaried income.

Income Tax is the largest deduction after PF — ₹1.64L in this example, using the New Regime with no additional exemptions claimed.

What's left — ₹16.03L a year, or ₹1,33,558 a month — is the actual number that shows up in your bank account. That's roughly 80% of the original CTC.

Why this matters when comparing offers

Two offers with the same CTC can produce meaningfully different in-hand salaries depending on how the CTC is structured — a higher Basic means higher PF and gratuity (good for long-term savings, but lower monthly cash), while a higher special allowance usually means more in-hand today. Neither is automatically better; it depends on what you actually need the money for.