Payroll Compliance Checklist for Indian Employers

Payroll is the one area where mistakes are noticed immediately — by your team and by the authorities. Here's a checklist to keep it clean.

Quick answer

Payroll compliance means computing salaries correctly and handling four statutory pieces every month: PF, ESI, professional tax and TDS on salary — each with its own deadline, deposit and return. Miss them and you face interest, damages and unhappy employees. Since 21 November 2025 all four sit under the Labour Codes, though the rates themselves did not change. A tracked monthly checklist keeps it all in order.

Who this guide is for

You are running or advising an Indian business that pays salaries. You have somewhere between three and three hundred people, you do not have a full-time compliance officer, and you would like to know exactly what has to happen each month, by when, and what it costs if it does not.

It is written for the founder or HR lead who signs off the payroll register, not for a specialist. Where the law is clear, this guide says so flatly. Where it is genuinely unsettled — and after November 2025 several things are — it says that too, rather than pretending to a certainty nobody has.

What changed on 21 November 2025, and what did not

All four Labour Codes were brought into force on 21 November 2025. This is not a proposal or a press release; it is a commencement notification in the Gazette of India. The Code on Social Security, 2020 was commenced by S.O. 5319(E) and the Code on Wages, 2019 by S.O. 5322(E), both dated 21 November 2025.

That single fact resets the citations in every payroll policy written before it. The Employees' State Insurance Act, 1948 and the Payment of Gratuity Act, 1972 stand repealed. The Employees' Provident Funds and Miscellaneous Provisions Act, 1952 is now referred to in the Government's own drafting as "the Repealed Act". What replaced them is a single Code with chapters.

Then, through 2026, the machinery arrived:

What did not change is just as important. Provident fund is still 12% from the employer and 12% from the employee. ESI is still 3.25% and 0.75%. The provident fund wage ceiling is still ₹15,000 a month. If your payroll arithmetic was right in October 2025, it is still right — what changed is which instrument you cite when someone asks why.

What is still unsettled — read this before you assume

Three things are genuinely open, and any guide that glosses over them is selling you confidence rather than information.

The ESI regulations are still in draft. On 13 July 2026 the Employees' State Insurance Corporation published draft ESI (General) Regulations, 2026 under section 157 of the Code, in supersession of the 1950 Regulations, with a 45-day window for objections. Until final regulations issue, the 1950 Regulations continue to operate through the savings provision in section 164(2)(a) of the Code. Day to day, nothing about your ESI filing changes — but the detailed procedural rules are provisional.

The gratuity ceiling has no notification under the Code. Section 53(3) says the maximum gratuity "shall not exceed such amount as may be notified by the Central Government". The familiar ₹20,00,000 comes from section 4(3) of the Payment of Gratuity Act, 1972 — a statute now repealed, whose notifications are carried forward by the savings provision until replaced. Provision on ₹20,00,000 by all means; do not tell an employee it is the statutory ceiling under the Code, because no such notification has issued.

State rules under the Codes are arriving unevenly. The Central Rules are done. State rules — which matter for registers, returns, inspections and several State-specific obligations — are not uniform and are still being notified. If you operate in more than one State, this is where the surprises live.

Applicability: who actually has to do this

Nothing below applies to you until you cross a threshold. Here they are, with the provision that sets each one.

Two refinements that catch people out.

Everyone counts for the headcount, including your highest earners. The second proviso to section 2(26) of the Code says that when you count employees to decide whether an establishment is covered under Chapter III or Chapter IV, "the employees, whose wages are more than the wage ceiling so notified by the Central Government, shall also be taken into account". A twenty-person company where every single person earns ₹80,000 a month is covered for provident fund, even though not one of them is below the ₹15,000 ceiling. The ceiling decides who contributes; it does not decide whether you are covered.

The ESI threshold is 10 in some cases and 20 in others. The Corporation's own coverage page records that State Governments extended coverage under section 1(5) of the ESI Act to shops, hotels, restaurants, cinemas, road-motor-transport, newspaper establishments, private medical and educational institutions employing 10 or more in certain States and Union Territories — while the Central Government extended it to shops, hotels, restaurants, road-motor-transport, cinemas, newspapers, insurance business, non-banking financial companies, port trusts, airport authorities and warehousing establishments employing 20 or more where the Centre is the appropriate Government. These are section 1(5) notifications and they survive the repeal. Check the notification for your State and your establishment type; there is no single national number.

Voluntary coverage is available too. Under section 1(5) of the Code, where an employer and a majority of employees agree, the Central Provident Fund Commissioner may apply Chapter III to that establishment by notification — useful when you are at eighteen people and hiring, and would rather start clean than backfill.

Registration comes before returns

You cannot file a return against a code you do not have. Before the first payroll cycle:

• EPFO registration for the establishment, then a Universal Account Number for each member. Our PF registration service covers the employer side; the PF and ESI registration guide walks through what EPFO and ESIC each ask for.
• ESIC registration, then an insurance number for each covered employee. Rule 18 of the Social Security (Central) Rules, 2026 requires registration on the specified portal, and the insurance number allotted is valid for thirty days and lapses if the declaration particulars are not updated within that window — see ESI registration.
• Professional tax registration with the State, typically in two flavours: an employer registration for deducting from salaries and an enrolment certificate for the business's own liability. Professional tax registration covers both.
• TAN from the Income Tax Department, without which you cannot deposit salary TDS at all.

Registration is one-time. Everything after this is a cycle.

The monthly payroll checklist

• Compute salaries — base, allowances, variable pay, reimbursements
• Apply deductions — PF, ESI, professional tax, TDS on salary
• Generate payslips — clear breakup, net pay
• Deposit PF and file the ECR (by ~15th)
• Deposit ESI and file (by ~15th)
• Pay professional tax and file the PTRC return (state schedule)
• Deposit salary TDS (monthly)
• Reconcile payroll to your books

That is the shape of the month. The rest of this guide is what sits behind each line.

The four statutory pieces

Expanded, with the current instrument for each:

Three rounding and mechanics details that make payroll registers reconcile or not:

• PF rounds to the nearest rupee, with 50 paise or more rounding up (EPF Scheme 2026, para 18(5)). ESI rounds up to the next higher rupee in every case (rule 19(1)). Software that applies one convention to both will drift by a few rupees a month and by a visible amount a year.
• PF is calculated on wages actually drawn or payable during the month (para 18(4)), which is why a mid-month joiner's contribution is on the pro-rated figure, not the full monthly wage.
• The employer may not recover its own share from the employee. Paragraph 21 of the EPF Scheme 2026 says so for provident fund and paragraph 8 of the EDLI Scheme 2026 says so for the insurance contribution, each "notwithstanding any contract to the contrary". A CTC statement may show the employer contribution; the payslip may not deduct it.

What counts as "wages" — the change that actually bites

The rates did not move. The base they apply to did.

Section 2(y) of the Code on Wages defines wages as basic pay, dearness allowance and retaining allowance, and then excludes a list: statutory bonus, accommodation and similar amenities, the employer's provident fund and pension contributions, conveyance allowance, special-expense reimbursements, house rent allowance, award or settlement remuneration, overtime allowance, commission, gratuity, retrenchment compensation and ex gratia on termination.

Then comes the proviso that changes salary structuring:

if payments made by the employer to the employee under clauses (a) to (i) exceeds one-half … of the all remuneration calculated under this clause, the amount which exceeds such one-half … shall be deemed as remuneration and shall be accordingly added in wages

In plain terms: if the excluded components add up to more than half of total remuneration, the excess is pulled back into wages. A structure that pushed basic down to 30% of CTC and loaded the rest into allowances no longer produces a low provident-fund base — the arithmetic corrects itself.

A second proviso pulls conveyance, HRA, award remuneration and overtime back in for two specific purposes: equal wages across genders, and the payment-of-wages provisions. And an explanation treats remuneration in kind up to 15% of total wages as part of wages.

The Code on Social Security carries a materially similar definition of wages at section 2(88), so the same add-back logic drives your provident fund and gratuity base. If you have not re-tested your salary structure against the 50% rule since November 2025, that is the highest-value hour of work available to you — and it is a project, not a spreadsheet edit, because it changes take-home pay, gratuity provisioning and bonus liability at the same time. If you would like it done alongside the run, that is part of our payroll management scope.

The compliance calendar

This is the part worth printing. Dates assume a non-Government employer paying monthly salaries.

Every month

Every quarter

The dates come from rule 219(4) of the Income-tax Rules, 2026, and the form from rule 219(1). ESI also runs on a six-month rhythm that matters for benefits rather than filing: contribution periods of 1 April to 30 September and 1 October to 31 March, with corresponding cash benefit periods of 1 January to 30 June and 1 July to 31 December.

Every year

Worked example: from CTC to net pay

Every number below is derived from the provisions cited above. Assumptions are labelled — where a figure depends on a State schedule or on a notified percentage that is not on the statutory face, it says so, and you should substitute your own.

Assumptions

• Employee works in a State that levies professional tax, at an establishment covered for both provident fund and ESI.
• Monthly fixed pay: basic ₹10,000 + HRA ₹5,000 + special allowance ₹5,000 = ₹20,000 gross.
• No overtime, no bonus paid in the month, no perquisites.
• Assumed: professional tax of ₹200 for the month. This is a State figure — yours will differ, subject only to the constitutional cap of ₹2,500 a year.
• Assumed: EDLI at 0.50% and provident-fund administrative charges at 0.50% of PF wages. Both percentages are fixed by Central Government notification rather than stated in the Schemes, and a monthly minimum applies to administrative charges. Confirm the current rates before you use these in a costing.
• Estimated annual salary income of ₹2,40,000 produces no tax liability on these facts, so the average rate under section 392(1) is nil and TDS for the month is ₹0. That is a conclusion from an estimate, not an exemption — the employer must still make the estimate.

Step 1 — establish "wages"

Total remuneration is ₹20,000. The only excluded component is HRA at ₹5,000, which is 25% of the total — below one-half, so the section 2(y) proviso does not add anything back.

Wages = basic ₹10,000 + special allowance ₹5,000 = ₹15,000. (Special allowance is not on the exclusion list, so it is wages.) Gross pay of ₹20,000 is below the ₹21,000 ESI limit, so the employee is covered for ESI, and ESI is computed on the wider section 2(22) base, which includes HRA.

Step 2 — the employee's payslip

The 50% test is not decorative. Section 18(3) of the Code on Wages caps total deductions in any wage period at half of wages, and section 18(2) makes the list of permitted deductions closed. If you are recovering a salary advance, a notice-period shortfall and a laptop at the same time, that cap is the constraint — and section 18(4) requires the excess to be recovered in the prescribed manner rather than simply held back.

Step 3 — what it costs the employer

The gap between "₹20,000 a month" and "₹23,321 a month" is 16.6%. That is the number to put in a hiring plan, and the number people forget when they quote CTC.

A second case: above the ESI limit

Take a monthly gross of ₹75,000 — basic ₹37,500, HRA ₹15,000, special allowance ₹22,500.

• Excluded components (HRA ₹15,000) are 20% of total, so no add-back. Wages = ₹60,000.
• Provident fund: wages exceed the ₹15,000 ceiling, so contributions are limited to the amount payable on the ceiling under paragraph 18(3) — ₹1,800 each side, with ₹1,250 to the Pension Fund. Many employers instead contribute 12% of actual basic; that is lawful only where the employee and employer have jointly opted in writing under paragraph 9(4), and the employer must then pay administrative charges on those higher wages too. Decide it deliberately and document it.
• ESI: gross of ₹75,000 is above the ₹21,000 limit, so the employee is not covered. If wages cross the limit part-way through a contribution period, coverage runs to the end of that period rather than stopping mid-cycle.
• Professional tax: per the State schedule, still capped at ₹2,500 a year across the State and all its local authorities.
• Salary TDS: this is where the money is. Section 392(1) requires deduction "at the average rate of income-tax … on the estimated income of the assessee under this head" — so you estimate the year's salary, compute the year's tax, divide by the number of months remaining, and deduct that. You do not apply a slab rate to one month's salary in isolation. Our TDS calculator helps with the arithmetic, and TDS on salary covers the estimate, the declarations and the certificate as a service.

Salary TDS in FY 2026-27: what actually changed

This is the section most payroll content has not caught up with.

The governing provision is section 392 of the Income-tax Act, 2025. The Income Tax Department states it plainly: for salary pertaining to tax year 2026-27, paid from April 2026 onwards, TDS obligations are in accordance with section 392(1). Section 393 governs deduction from payments other than salary, section 394 governs tax collected at source, and section 397 carries the higher rate where the payee has no PAN. Citing 393 for a salary deduction is simply wrong.

Get the year framing right. The Income-tax Act, 2025 commenced on 1 April 2026, so it governs FY 2026-27 — that is, assessment year 2027-28. Assessment year 2026-27 is FY 2025-26 and is still governed by the Income-tax Act, 1961. Salary for March 2026 paid on 31 March 2026 falls under the old Act; April 2026 onwards falls under the new one.

The forms were renumbered. Under the Income-tax Rules, 2026:

Form 24Q and Form 16 remain the correct names for FY 2025-26 and earlier, which is why you will keep seeing both sets of numbers in circulation for a couple of years. Say the year, then say the form. Our TDS return filing service handles both regimes, and the TDS return filing guide covers the non-salary side.

Four operational points from the Rules that are easy to get wrong:

• Form 130 cannot be typed up. Rule 215(7) requires the certificate to be generated and downloaded from the specified portal. A hand-made certificate is not a certificate.
• Multiple employers in a year: each employer issues Part A and Part B of Form 130 for its own period, and Part C may be issued by each employer or by the last employer, at the employee's option (r.215(2)).
• What you may and may not offset. Section 392(4)(a) lets the employee report salary from another employer, section 157 relief, a house-property loss, other-head income and tax already deducted. But section 392(4)(b) says the tax deductible from salary may be reduced only for a house-property loss and for tax already deducted or collected. An employee's capital loss or business loss cannot be used to cut monthly salary TDS.
• Evidence, not assertions. Rule 205(2) sets out what the employee must produce: for HRA, the landlord's name, address and PAN where aggregate rent for the year exceeds ₹1,00,000, plus the relationship if any; for leave travel concession, evidence of expenditure; for house-property interest, the lender's name, address and PAN; for Chapter VIII deductions, evidence of investment or expenditure. Collect it in Form 124 in the first quarter, not in March.

Professional tax, honestly

Professional tax is a State levy, permitted by Article 276(1) of the Constitution and capped by Article 276(2):

The total amount payable in respect of any one person to the State or to any one municipality, district board, local board or other local authority in the State by way of taxes on professions, trades, callings and employments shall not exceed two thousand and five hundred rupees per annum.

That ceiling — raised from ₹250 by the Constitution (Sixtieth Amendment) Act, 1988 — is absolute. No State can demand more than ₹2,500 a year from one person across the State and all its local authorities combined, which works out to about ₹208 a month on average.

Everything else is State law: the slabs, the exemption threshold, whether the employer registers once or twice, whether the return is monthly, quarterly or annual, and whether one month in the year carries a different amount. Some States and Union Territories do not levy professional tax at all.

We are not publishing a state-wise slab table here, because a slab table that is wrong for your State is worse than no table. Check your State's commercial-tax portal, or let us confirm it as part of professional tax return filing. The professional tax return guide covers the filing mechanics.

The most common multi-State mistake is worth naming: professional tax follows where the employee works, not where your registered office sits. Open an office in a second State and you generally need a second registration and a second return cycle from the first salary paid there.

Quarterly and annual

• Form 24Q — the quarterly salary-TDS return
• Form 16 — the annual TDS certificate to each employee
• PF/ESI annual reconciliations as applicable

For FY 2026-27 those first two are Form 138 and Form 130, as set out above. The reconciliations are the part nobody schedules and everybody needs: PF and ESI remittances against the payroll register, and Form 130 totals against the four Form 138 filings. A mismatch found in April is an adjustment; the same mismatch found in a notice two years later is an argument.

Onboarding and exits

• New joiners: UAN (PF) and IP (ESI) creation, declarations
• Exits: full-and-final settlement, recoveries, documentation

In more detail, because both ends of the employment lifecycle are where compliance actually fails.

On joining, within the first cycle: generate or link the Universal Account Number and upload the new-member details within 15 days of the close of the month (EPF Scheme 2026, para 24(2)); register the employee on the ESIC portal and complete the declaration particulars within thirty days, or the insurance number lapses (Social Security (Central) Rules, 2026, rule 18); collect the employee's Aadhaar, PAN, an Aadhaar-seeded bank account and past-membership particulars, which paragraph 25 of the EPF Scheme 2026 puts on the employee as a duty; and collect Form 124 so the first TDS estimate is built on evidence.

An employee who joins above the ₹15,000 ceiling and has never been a PF member is an excluded employee and need not be enrolled — but if they were a member with a previous employer, membership continues and you must enrol them. This is the single most common enrolment error, and it is expensive because it compounds monthly.

On exit, the clock is short. Section 17(2) of the Code on Wages requires wages to be paid within two working days of removal, dismissal, retrenchment, resignation, or unemployment caused by closure. Two working days is not the industry-standard "45 days after the last working day". Alongside that: settle leave encashment, apply the section 18 deduction rules to any recovery, compute gratuity where five years' continuous service is complete, and issue the exit documentation. Gratuity is also payable without five years on death, disablement or the expiry of a fixed-term contract, and fixed-term employees are entitled on a pro rata basis (section 53).

Gratuity: provision monthly, or be surprised annually

Gratuity is not a monthly remittance, which is why it gets forgotten until someone with six years' service resigns.

Under section 53 of the Code on Social Security, gratuity is payable after five years of continuous service on superannuation, retirement or resignation, and without the five-year condition on death, disablement, or expiry of a fixed-term contract. The rate is 15 days' wages for every completed year of service, or part in excess of six months, on the wages last drawn — so a person with 6 years and 7 months is paid for 7 years. Seasonal establishments pay 7 days' wages per season, and working journalists qualify at three years rather than five.

The practical point is that "wages last drawn" now carries the section 2(88) definition with its 50% add-back. If your salary structure was allowance-heavy, your gratuity liability just moved, and it moved retrospectively across every year of service for anyone who leaves after the change. Provisioning at roughly 4.81% of wages a month (that is 15/26 divided by 12) keeps the balance sheet honest — which is a bookkeeping job, and one reason payroll and accounting services should not sit in different systems.

Common mistakes

• Missing PF/ESI/PT/TDS monthly deadlines (interest + damages)
• Wrong deduction computation
• Not issuing payslips or Form 16
• Payroll not reconciling with the books
• Forgetting a new state's PT when you expand

Five more that show up repeatedly, now that the Codes are in force:

• Excluding high earners from the headcount. Covered above; it is the fastest way to be found unregistered.
• Applying a slab rate to monthly salary for TDS. Section 392(1) requires the average rate on estimated annual income. Applying a slab rate month by month over-deducts early and under-deducts late, and both directions generate complaints.
• Deducting the employer's PF share from the payslip. Prohibited outright by paragraph 21 of the EPF Scheme 2026.
• Treating annual bonus as ESI wages. ESIC's position, resting on section 2(22) and Supreme Court authority, is that a payment with a periodicity exceeding two months — annual bonus, incentive bonus, production bonus, annual commission — is not wages for contribution. Conversely house rent allowance is ESI wages, and overtime is wages for contribution though not for deciding coverage. Getting this backwards is common and costs real money in both directions.
• Quoting the old PF damages slabs. The 5%/10%/15%/25%-per-annum structure is gone. The current table is in paragraph 23 of the EPF Scheme 2026 and is set out below.

The failure path: what actually happens when you miss

Nothing dramatic happens on day one. What happens is a sequence.

Month 1 — the deadline passes. The ECR is not filed or the challan is not paid. Nobody calls. The liability sits in your books, and interest begins accruing from the due date, not from the day someone notices.

Month 2 to 4 — the arithmetic compounds. Damages accrue monthly on the PF arrears. The professional-tax return is now two cycles behind, and in most States the penalty is per return rather than per rupee. The unpaid salary TDS is now visible in your quarterly statement — or, worse, the statement was not filed either, in which case the late-filing fee runs daily.

Month 4 onward — it becomes a case. An inspection or a system-generated notice arrives. The default now has to be quantified and defended rather than simply paid. Where employees' contributions were deducted but not deposited, the character of the default changes: paragraph 22(3) of the EPF Scheme 2026 says any sum deducted from wages "shall be deemed to have been entrusted to the employer" for the purpose of paying it over. That is trust language, and it is why deducted-but-not-deposited is treated far more seriously than employer-share arrears.

The employee side. Section 18(5) of the Code on Wages protects the employee: where the employer deducts but does not deposit, "such employee shall not be held responsible for such default of the employer". The employee's PF passbook does not update, their ESI benefits can be disrupted mid-contribution-period, and their Form 130 will not reconcile to their own tax return — so the complaint arrives from inside the company before it arrives from outside.

Penalties, interest and late fees

Two things to note about the PF table. First, these are monthly percentages, not annual — a four-month default at 1% a month is 4% of arrears, not 1%. Second, the same rates apply retrospectively to defaults under paragraph 32-A of the old EPF Scheme 1952 with effect from 14 June 2024, so a default straddling the change is not computed on two different bases.

The recovery route

Missed a cycle? The sequence that minimises the damage:

1. Quantify before you pay. Rebuild the month's register — who was covered, on what wages, at what rate. Paying an approximate amount creates a second reconciliation problem on top of the first.
2. Pay the principal first, immediately. Damages accrue on arrears per month. Every month you wait adds a band, and the bands escalate at two months and again at four.
3. File the return even if it is late. The PF late fee is capped at the month's administrative charges, so a late return is a bounded cost. An unfiled return is an open one, and it blocks the employee's passbook.
4. Deal with the deducted-but-not-deposited amounts as the priority. Employee contributions and deducted TDS are held in trust. Employer-share arrears are a debt; these are not.
5. Reconcile the affected employees individually. PF passbooks, ESI contribution history and TDS credits all need to land in the right accounts. A bulk payment that does not map to members fixes your liability and not their records.
6. Fix the calendar, not just the month. A single missed cycle is almost always a process gap — an approver on leave, an unowned deadline — and it will recur. Automated reminders and a named owner per deadline cost nothing.
7. Get help before an inspection, not after. Voluntary correction is a materially better position than one discovered on inspection. That is exactly the sort of clean-up our HR and payroll compliance team handles.

Records to retain, and for how long

The honest summary: retention periods differ by statute, and the safe rule is to keep the whole payroll file for the longest period any of them requires rather than pruning by category. Storage is cheaper than reconstruction.

Where this fits with everything else

Payroll does not sit alone. The deductions you make feed four different filing streams, and each has a service page and a guide behind it: PF return filing and the PF return guide for the monthly ECR; ESI return filing and the ESI return guide for the monthly contribution; professional tax return filing for the State cycle; and TDS on salary for the deposit, the quarterly statement and the annual certificate. If you would rather your team just received a correct payslip, payslip generation is part of the run.

Run this checklist every month — or hand payroll to us — and your team is paid right and your employer compliance stays clean.

Sources and currency

Applies to: Financial year 2026-27 (tax year 2026-27, assessment year 2027-28), India

Figures and dates were checked against the gazette text, the India Code text of each statute, and the regulators' own portals on 19 August 2026. Two things below are deliberately left open rather than guessed — the gratuity ceiling under section 53(3) of the Code on Social Security, which still awaits a notification, and the current notified percentages for EPF administrative charges and EDLI, which are set by notification and are shown in the worked example as labelled assumptions. State professional-tax slabs are State law and are not reproduced here.

• Code on Social Security, 2020 — commencement, S.O. 5319(E) dated 21 November 2025 (Gazette of India, CG-DL-E-21112025-267882)
• Code on Social Security, 2020 — India Code text (First Schedule, sections 2(26), 53, 164)
• Code on Wages, 2019 — India Code text as on 21 November 2025 (sections 2(y), 16, 17, 18)
• Wage ceiling of ₹15,000 for Chapter III — S.O. 2702(E) dated 29 May 2026, Ministry of Labour and Employment
• Employees' Provident Funds Scheme, 2026 — G.S.R. 525(E) dated 29 June 2026
• Employees' Pension Scheme, 2026 — G.S.R. 527(E) dated 29 June 2026
• Employees' Deposit-Linked Insurance Scheme, 2026 — G.S.R. 526(E) dated 29 June 2026
• Social Security (Central) Rules, 2026 — G.S.R. 344(E) dated 8 May 2026 (rule 19, ESI contribution rates)
• ESIC — Contribution rates, due date and contribution periods
• ESIC — Coverage thresholds and the ₹21,000 wage limit
• ESIC — What counts as wages under section 2(22)
• Income-tax Act, 2025 — section 392, salary TDS (Gazette of India, 21 August 2025)
• Income-tax Rules, 2026 — G.S.R. 198(E) dated 20 March 2026 (rules 204, 205, 215, 218, 219)
• Income Tax Department — TDS compliance under the Income-tax Act, 2025
• Constitution of India — Article 276(2), the ₹2,500 professional-tax cap