Gift Tax Calculator

Aggregate > ₹50,000 → the WHOLE aggregate is taxable, not the excess. Exempt from a relative, on your own marriage, or under a will.

India abolished the Gift Tax Act in 1998 and replaced it with a charge running the other way: section 56(2)(x) taxes the person RECEIVING, under income from other sources, at their own slab rate, while the giver owes nothing and reports nothing. The ₹50,000 everyone has heard of is a threshold rather than an allowance, and the distinction is expensive. The words are "the aggregate value of which exceeds fifty thousand rupees, the whole of the aggregate value", so a gift of exactly ₹50,000 carries no tax at all and a gift of ₹50,001 makes the entire ₹50,001 taxable — roughly ₹15,600 at the 30% slab, created by one rupee. The test is on the aggregate for the year, so three ₹20,000 gifts from three different people total ₹60,000 and all of it falls in, though money, immovable property and specified movable property sit in three separate baskets each with its own threshold. Exemption depends on a closed list. A gift from a relative is outside the charge at any size, and 'relative' means spouse, brother or sister, brother or sister of the spouse, brother or sister of either parent, any lineal ascendant or descendant of the individual or their spouse, and the spouses of those people. A cousin is not on it and neither is a nephew or niece. The list is also asymmetric in a way that catches people: 'brother or sister of either of the parents' puts an uncle on your list, so his gift to you is exempt, while a sibling's child appears on nobody's list, so the identical gift from you to him is fully taxable in his hands. Gifts on the occasion of the recipient's own marriage are exempt from anyone in any amount, but no other occasion is — a birthday, an anniversary or a child's wedding reaches nothing in the section. Property received under a will or by inheritance is outside the charge entirely. Where consideration was paid, only the shortfall is ever charged rather than the whole value, and immovable property gets a safe harbour of the higher of ₹50,000 and 10% of the price. Finally, and separately, an exempt gift can still cost the GIVER: section 64(1)(iv) clubs the income from an asset transferred to a spouse back into the transferor's total income for as long as the marriage subsists, and section 64(1A) does the same for a minor child, which defeats the most common reason such gifts are made. Only second-generation income escapes.