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Guides to Indian rules: income tax regimes and deductions, EPF and NPS, IRDAI-regulated insurance, and the health and life cover most households actually buy.
10 guides
Covered here: EPF · PPF · NPS · Section 80C · Section 80D · IRDAI · ULIP · figures in INR
The Ayushman Vay Vandana Card covers every citizen aged 70 and above regardless of income, with no waiting period on pre-existing conditions. Holding private health insurance does not disqualify you. Holding CGHS or ECHS means choosing.
Thirteen separate withdrawal provisions were merged into one. The waiting period fell from up to seven years to twelve months, the employer's share became withdrawable for the first time, and 25% now stays locked until retirement.
Section 45 of the Insurance Act gives a life policy a hard deadline. Inside three years an insurer can contest it on misstatement or fraud. Outside three years it cannot be called in question on any ground whatsoever, and the clock runs from the later dates, not the earliest.
Individual life and health insurance went from 18% GST to nil on 22 September 2025. Group policies did not, the saving reaching you may be less than 18%, and which rate applies turns on the date the premium was paid rather than the date it fell due.
IRDAI's Master Circular on Health Insurance Business puts hard clocks on a cashless claim, and makes the insurer pay for the delay out of its own shareholder fund. Most policyholders waiting at a discharge desk have no idea the deadline exists.
PFRDA rewrote the NPS exit rules in December 2025. The lump sum ceiling for private subscribers went from 60% to 80%, normal exit can now arrive 15 years in rather than at 60, and the government sector was left exactly where it was.
"No deductions under the new regime" is the line everyone repeats, and it is wrong. A short list survives, and for a private-sector employee one of them is worth more under the new regime than the old.
A death benefit is exempt whatever the premium. A maturity payout is exempt only if the policy clears three separate tests, and two of them were added recently enough that a lot of published guidance still misses them.
The new tax regime has been the default since AY 2024-25, and it does not allow 80C or 80D at all. Whether the old regime is still worth choosing is arithmetic, not opinion: here are the AY 2026-27 slabs, rebates and limits to do it with.
Section 80D is two allowances, not one: a limit for your own household and a separate limit for premiums paid for your parents. Both double where the insured is a senior citizen, and both vanish if you are in the default tax regime.