Is Section 80C gone under the new Income-tax Act?

What actually changed, and what did not

The Income-tax Act 2025 replaces the Income-tax Act 1961 and took effect on 1 April 2026. It is a rewrite for readability rather than a change of policy: the entire statute was reorganised, which renumbered almost every provision people know by heart. Rates, limits and eligibility were largely left alone.

So the practical answer to "has 80C been scrapped" is no. The deduction is still ₹1,50,000 a year, it still covers the same list of instruments, and it is still available only if you file under the old regime. What changed is its address in the Act: Section 123, with the qualifying investments set out in Schedule XV rather than inside the section itself.

The renumbering, for the sections a salaried return uses

Section 80C is now Section 123. The ₹1.5 lakh ceiling and the familiar list — provident fund, public provident fund, equity-linked savings schemes, life insurance premiums, national savings certificates, home-loan principal, tuition fees, five-year tax-saving deposits — are carried over, with the list moved to Schedule XV.

Section 80D is now Section 126. Health-insurance premiums, preventive check-ups and specified medical expenditure for senior citizens keep the same ₹25,000 basic limit, rising to ₹50,000 where the person insured is a senior citizen.

The HRA exemption, long known as Section 10(13A), moves out of Section 10 altogether: it now sits in Schedule III (Table Sl. No. 11), read with the new Act’s exempt-income provision and Rule 279 of the Income-tax Rules 2026. The three-limb structure is untouched — the lowest of actual allowance received, rent paid minus 10% of salary, and 50% or 40% of salary depending on the city — but the 50% list grew: Rule 279(1)(c) names eight cities (Mumbai, Kolkata, Delhi, Chennai, Hyderabad, Pune, Ahmedabad and Bengaluru) where Rule 2A named four.

More broadly, the old Chapter VI-A deductions are gathered into roughly Sections 122 to 154. We are deliberately not publishing a number for every old section here: several of the remaining ones are not yet stated consistently across sources, and a wrong section number on a tax page is worse than no number at all. For anything outside the three above, check the Act’s own mapping or ask whoever files your return.

Which year the new numbers apply to

This is where most of the confusion sits. The new numbering applies from the tax year 2026-27 onwards. A return for the financial year 2025-26 — the one filed in 2026 — is still governed by the 1961 Act and still uses the old numbers.

That means both sets of numbers are correct at the same time, for different years, for roughly the next filing cycle. If a document in front of you says 80C, it is not out of date; it is describing a year that ran under the old Act.

The assessment year has gone

The other change worth knowing is a vocabulary one. The old Act used two labels for every filing: the previous year you earned the income in, and the assessment year you were taxed in. Income earned in the financial year 2025-26 belonged to assessment year 2026-27.

The new Act keeps one label. Income earned in 2026-27 belongs to tax year 2026-27, and there is no separate assessment year to advance it to. If you are looking for an AY on a form or a screen and cannot find one, that is why.

What you actually have to do about it

For a salaried taxpayer, nothing in the amounts. Your payslip, your Form 16 and your employer’s declaration portal will move to the new numbering on their own schedule, and the amounts you claim do not change either way. Use whichever number the document in front of you uses.

Muktify’s tax screen still labels these rows with the old numbers — 80C, 80D, 24b — for exactly that reason: you are copying figures off a Form 16, and it should match what you are reading from. The arithmetic behind it is the same under either name.