Pick your corpus for the full ladder, or go straight to the rules that changed in 2025-26 — most of the internet hasn't caught up with them yet.
Short answer: a retiree living on deposit interest pays zero income tax up to roughly ₹1.6 crore of corpus — the new regime's ₹12 lakh rebate covers the interest an SCSS + POMIS + FD ladder produces at every level below that. The real work is TDS paperwork, deposit-insurance limits, and the maturity resets. Each page below does that work for one corpus.
Rates are for Q2 FY 2026-27 (Jul-Sep 2026), unchanged for the 10th straight quarter · New tax regime, FY 2026-27 · Figures are indicative, as of August 2026
| Corpus | Monthly income | Annual interest | Income tax |
|---|---|---|---|
| ₹20 Lakh | ₹12,800 | ₹1,53,600 | Nil (below exemption) |
| ₹30 Lakh | ₹20,500 | ₹2,46,000 | Nil (below exemption) |
| ₹50 Lakh | ₹32,696 | ₹3,92,350 | Nil (below exemption) |
| ₹75 Lakh | ₹47,800 | ₹5,73,600 | Nil (87A rebate) |
| ₹1 Crore | ₹62,904 | ₹7,54,850 | Nil (87A rebate) |
Ladders use SCSS 8.2%, POMIS 7.4% and large-bank senior FDs at 7.25% — notified/typical rates for Q2 FY 2026-27. Click any row for the allocation, TDS position and what breaks at each level.
The new regime exempts the first ₹4 lakh outright and the Section 156(2)(a) rebate cancels tax on income up to ₹12 lakh. A blended deposit ladder yields about 7.5% — and ₹12 lakh ÷ 7.5% ≈ ₹1.6 crore. Below that corpus, a retiree with only interest income owes nothing; the fights that remain are TDS being deducted anyway and refunds. Above it, the rebate cliff behaves exactly like the one our salary pages map at ₹12 lakh.
| Guide | Why it exists |
|---|---|
| Form 121 | Replaced Forms 15G/15H from 1 April 2026 — half the internet hasn't noticed |
| Income Tax Act 2025 | The full old-number → new-number translation table (16→130, 26AS→168, 80C→123…) |
| NPS exit rules | December 2025 rewrote them: 80/20, ₹8 lakh full withdrawal — and a 20% tax trap |
| SCSS after 5 years | Repeatable 3-year extensions, the rate-reset trap, the one-year window |
| Senior FD rates | How the 0.25–0.75% premium stacks, and where DICGC draws the line |
| EPS pension | The formula behind the ~₹7,500 ceiling and the ₹1,000 floor — now EPS 2026 |
| Parents' health cover | The five clauses that decide senior claims; the tax angle, told straight |
Half our readers here are retirees; the other half are their children doing the research — the same people using our salary pages for their own offers. Both get the same treatment the rest of the site gets: government-notified rates, every claim checked against the body that issues it, and no product to sell you at the end.
As a pure-arithmetic anchor: each ₹10 lakh of corpus yields roughly ₹6,200–6,800 a month at current SCSS/POMIS/FD rates. The corpus pages work five levels from ₹20 lakh to ₹1 crore to the rupee — need, of course, depends on your expenses and inflation.
Up to about ₹12 lakh of interest a year — roughly a ₹1.6 crore ladder — yes, via the basic exemption plus the Section 156(2)(a) rebate under the new regime. TDS may still be deducted and reclaimed; Form 121 prevents that.
SCSS: 8.2%, sovereign-backed, ₹30 lakh per person, quarterly payouts. Everything else in the ladder exists because SCSS has a ceiling.
Small-savings rates are reviewed quarterly (unchanged for 10 straight quarters as of Q2 FY 2026-27) and bank FD cards move anytime. Every page carries its as-of date, and rate resets are built into each ladder's assumptions.
Related: All government schemes · FD income by amount · Income tax by salary
A note on section numbers. The Income-tax Act, 2025 replaced the Income-tax Act, 1961 with effect from 1 April 2026. Section numbers on this page are those of the 2025 Act. Where you know a provision by its old number, the mapping is: 115BAC → 202, 87A → 156, 16(ia) → 19, 80CCD(2) → 124, 112A → 198, 10(10) → 19(1) Table Sl. Nos. 3-6.
The official pages this page is checked against. If one of them disagrees with us, it wins.
Written and checked by the PaisaSamajh editorial desk · Last reviewed: 24 August 2026 · How we check this →