HRA - House Rent Allowance - Demystified

If you are a salaried person, you'd have seen a HRA component in your salary.
Also, you'd have known that you can save tax on whatever rent you pay.

Once you have the rental receipts from your house owner, you can fill in the following excel sheet to know how much you can exempt tax from your income.



Please edit only those in the yellow color and you can find the other details getting modified automatically.

If you enter your basic, your HRA is also modified for the first time. This is because most of the time the basic and HRA are inter related. It is mostly 40% of your basic pay.

In the example shown above, the basic pay is Rs. 8000/- and Rent paid is Rs. 5000/-
But, It is not worth showing more than Rs.4000/- as it doesn't affect your tax exemption in any way. Also, you will be eligible for exemption only if you pay rent for more than Rs.800/- in this case. In this case, the tax excluded is 3200/-, in which case, you save the tax on that amount based on your tax slab.

You just enter your basic, HRA and Rent paid and see the modification in other places.
If you are living with your family and want to claim HRA, you can do so by putting the house owner as your father or your mother. Most of the companies just ask for 3 month rental receipt.