States With No Professional Tax

The full list

Why it varies by state at all

Professional tax is a state tax, not a central one — Article 276(2) of the Constitution allows states and union territories to levy a tax on employment and professions, capped at ₹2,500 per person per year, but it doesn't require any state to levy one. Article 276 sets a ceiling, not a floor. Some states enacted a Profession Tax Act decades ago and still run it (see our Karnataka and Maharashtra pages); most of the 16 above simply never enacted one, or — in two specific cases below — enacted one and then stopped applying it.

The one exception worth knowing: Chhattisgarh

Chhattisgarh isn't "no professional tax" in the same way as, say, Delhi. The Chhattisgarh Professional Tax Act, 1995 is still on the books, with its own slab structure — but a state government notification (No. F-10-22/2011/CT/V(22), dated 31 March 2011, effective 1 April 2011) exempted salaried employees from the Act's provisions entirely. The practical effect for anyone salaried in Chhattisgarh today is the same as any other state on this list — nil — but the mechanism is different: an active exemption on a dormant Act, not the absence of one. We found this notification number cited consistently across independent sources while researching this page, which gives us reasonable confidence in it, though we couldn't access Chhattisgarh's own commercial tax department site to confirm it directly against the primary notification — see the trust footer below for exactly what we could and couldn't verify to that standard.

The other exception: Odisha

Odisha's route to zero is different again, and more recent. The Odisha State Tax on Professions, Trades, Callings and Employments Act, 2000 was repealed outright — not exempted, like Chhattisgarh's — by Odisha Ordinance 02 of 2026 (Odisha Gazette No. 1496, dated 21 April 2026), with retrospective effect from 1 April 2026. Where Chhattisgarh's Act is dormant but technically still on the books, Odisha's Act no longer exists at all. See professional tax in Odisha for the full story, including what happens to tax already deducted before the repeal.

What this means for your take-home pay if you move states

The difference is real but small. Every PT-charging state we've verified tops out at ₹200/month (₹2,400–₹2,500/year, depending on whether the state adds a February top-up) — so moving from, say, Karnataka to Delhi at the same salary gains you at most around ₹200/month, well under 1% of most salaries above the exemption threshold. It's a genuine, permanent difference, and worth knowing if you're comparing two otherwise identical offers in different states — but it's rarely the deciding factor on its own. Run your own numbers in the Take-Home Salary Calculator, which lets you edit the professional-tax field directly to compare states.

No PT where you live doesn't mean no PT applies to you

This is the nuance most summaries skip: professional tax is tied to where your employment or business is based, not where you personally live. If your employer's registered establishment is in a PT-charging state but you work remotely from one of the 16 states above, you may still have PT deducted, depending on how your employer is registered and where your payroll is processed. Conversely, moving your own residence to a no-PT state doesn't retroactively exempt income already earned through an employer based elsewhere. If your situation is anything other than "I live and work for a local employer in the same state," confirm with your employer's payroll team rather than assuming the state you live in is what determines your liability.

Related reading

• Professional tax in Maharashtra — three tiers, plus a separate exemption for women.
• Professional tax in Karnataka — the 2025 amendment that simplified three tiers to two.
• Professional tax in West Bengal — the most gradual slab of any state we cover, four bands.
• Professional tax in Telangana — identical to Andhra Pradesh, for a historical reason.
• Professional tax in Andhra Pradesh — identical to Telangana.
• Professional tax in Gujarat — the simplest structure of all, and one we corrected after finding stale data.
• Professional tax in Odisha — the newest addition to this list, repealed outright in 2026.