This page exists before the calculator does. If you disagree with an assumption below, you should distrust the number the calculator gives you — so every assumption is here, with its source and its uncertainty.
Only 6.68% of Indians filed an income tax return in FY 2023-24, and roughly 63% of individual filers had no liability at all. A calculator built on income tax speaks to under 2% of the country and tells everyone else they have no stake in the budget.
But indirect taxes in the 2026-27 Union Budget come to ₹16,79,130 croresrc against ₹14,66,000 croresrc from income tax. Everyone who buys anything is contributing. This calculator estimates that.
GST you pay is split roughly in half: CGST to the Union, SGST to your state. Only the CGST half is inside the ₹53,47,315 crore this site is about. So every rate below is the full rate you pay at the counter, and the model multiplies it by 50% to get the Union portion.
Counting the full GST rate as a contribution to the Union budget — which is the obvious mistake — would overstate it by 2×.
Rates are also treated as tax-inclusive. A ₹118 purchase at 18% contains ₹18 of tax, not ₹21.24. Adding the rate on top of a price that already includes it is the second obvious mistake.
Nobody knows the exact GST mix of your grocery basket. Each category below carries a low, central and high effective rate, and the calculator reports the band. A single confident figure would be false precision.
Item groups and expenditure shares are exactly those of HCES 2023-24, Statement 4. The effective GST rates are ours, not MoSPI’s — each is argued below and each can be wrong.
| Category | Rural % | Urban % | GST band | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cereals & cereal substitutes | 4.99 | 3.76 | 0%–5% | Unbranded/loose cereals are exempt; pre-packaged and labelled attract 5%. Most rural consumption is loose. |
| Pulses & their products | 2.04 | 1.40 | 0%–5% | Same exempt/5% split as cereals. |
| Sugar & salt | 0.89 | 0.57 | 0%–5% | Salt is exempt; sugar is 5%. |
| Milk & milk products | 8.44 | 7.19 | 0%–5% | Fresh milk and curd exempt; processed dairy such as butter, ghee and cheese at 5%. |
| Vegetables | 6.03 | 4.12 | 0%–5% | Fresh vegetables exempt. Only frozen and processed forms are taxed. |
| Fruits | 3.85 | 3.87 | 0%–5% | Fresh fruit exempt; dried and processed at 5%. |
| Egg, fish & meat | 4.92 | 3.56 | 0%–5% | Fresh and chilled exempt; frozen and branded at 5%. |
| Edible oil | 2.77 | 1.82 | 5%–5% | 5% across edible oils. |
| Spices | 3.27 | 2.30 | 0%–5% | 5% when pre-packaged and labelled; loose spices exempt. |
| Beverages, refreshments, processed food | 9.84 | 11.09 | 5%–18% | Wide band by design. Includes purchased cooked meals (restaurants 5% without input credit), packaged food (5%), and aerated drinks (40%). The largest single source of uncertainty in the model. |
| Pan, tobacco & intoxicants | 3.84 | 2.37 | 0%–40% | Split category. Tobacco and pan masala are demerit goods at 40% plus cess, all of it Union-side. ALCOHOL FOR HUMAN CONSUMPTION IS OUTSIDE GST — it is taxed by state excise, which never touches the Union budget. The central estimate assumes most of this category is alcohol in urban India. |
| Fuel and light | 6.11 | 5.59 | 0%–5% | LPG at 5%; electricity is outside GST entirely. Petrol and diesel are also outside GST and are handled separately below via union excise — do not double-count them here. |
| Education | 3.24 | 5.97 | 0%–5% | Education services by recognised institutions are exempt. |
| Medical | 6.83 | 5.85 | 0%–5% | Healthcare services exempt; medicines mostly 5%. |
| Conveyance | 7.59 | 8.46 | 0%–18% | Public transport largely exempt; cab aggregators and economy air travel 5%; own-vehicle running cost is mostly fuel, handled separately via excise. |
| Consumer services excluding conveyance | 5.25 | 5.72 | 5%–18% | Standard rate on most services. Many small providers are below the registration threshold, which the low bound reflects. |
| Misc. goods, entertainment | 6.22 | 6.92 | 5%–18% | Standard rate. |
| Rent | 0.56 | 6.58 | 0%–0% | Residential rent to an individual is exempt. |
| Taxes and cesses | 0.21 | 0.33 | 0%–0% | Already tax — taxing it again would double-count. Mostly property tax and water charges, which are local, not Union. |
| Clothing, bedding & footwear | 6.63 | 5.66 | 5%–18% | 5% below the per-piece value threshold, 18% above it. |
| Durable goods | 6.48 | 6.87 | 5%–18% | Standard rate on most appliances and electronics after GST 2.0. |
Reference average monthly per capita expenditure: ₹4,122 rural, ₹6,996 urban. These pre-fill the form; they never compute anyone’s answer. They are 2023-24 figures in 2023-24 prices, so against a 2026-27 budget they understate real spending.
Motor fuel carries Union excise instead, at a flat rupees-per-litre rate — so this part of the estimate is not a band at all. As of 2026-08-17:
| Component | Petrol ₹/litre | Diesel ₹/litre | Shared with states? |
|---|---|---|---|
| Basic excise duty | 1.40 | 1.80 | Yes — in the divisible pool |
| Special additional excise duty | 3.00 | 0.00 | No |
| Agriculture Infrastructure & Development Cess | 2.50 | 4.00 | No — cesses are excluded |
| Road and Infrastructure Cess | 5.00 | 2.00 | No — cesses are excluded |
| Total Union excise | 11.90 | 7.80 |
Worth sitting with: of the ₹11.90 the Union takes on a litre of petrol, only ₹1.40 is shared with states. The other ₹10.50 is special duties and cesses, constitutionally outside the divisible pool. State VAT on fuel is additional and never touches the Union budget.
Fuel excise changes far more often than the budget does. This figure carries an asOf date and must be re-checked against PPAC before any launch or campaign.
FY 2026-27. The Finance Bill 2026 left the structure unchanged from FY 2025-26.
| Total income | Rate |
|---|---|
| ₹0 – ₹4,00,000 | 0% |
| ₹4,00,000 – ₹8,00,000 | 5% |
| ₹8,00,000 – ₹12,00,000 | 10% |
| ₹12,00,000 – ₹16,00,000 | 15% |
| ₹16,00,000 – ₹20,00,000 | 20% |
| ₹20,00,000 – ₹24,00,000 | 25% |
| Above ₹24,00,000 | 30% |
The estimate is a floor, not a total tax burden. These are real and are left out because attributing them to one household would mean inventing a number:
| customs | Customs duty (Rs 2,71,200 crore) is embedded in the price of imported goods and cannot honestly be attributed to an individual from spending data alone. |
| corporation tax | Corporation tax (Rs 12,31,000 crore) is ultimately borne by some mix of shareholders, workers and consumers. Economists do not agree on the split, so the model does not pretend to one. |
| state taxes | State GST, state excise on alcohol, state VAT on fuel, stamp duty and property tax are all real and often larger than the Union share — but none of them are in the Rs 53,47,315 crore this site is about. |
These are shown to the user as an explicit 'not counted' line. Omitting them understates a household's true total tax burden, and saying so is more useful than inventing a number.
Found an error? That is the most useful thing you can send us. The model lives in data/model/indirect-tax-incidence.json, and every number on this site is versioned in git.