Yes, you can claim income tax exemption on both house rent allowance (HRA) and repayment of home loan. If you are living in a house on rent and servicing home loan on another property - even if both the properties are located in the same city - you can claim tax benefit for both.
But "this situation could be closely monitored by the Income Tax Department particularly where the amounts are relatively higher and may also disallow one of the claims if sufficient explanations are not available", says Amit Maheshwari, managing partner at Ashok Maheshwary & Associates LLP.
Mr Maheshwari cites some cases when the tax department may not raise questions:
- When the person may have moved from rented house to own house during the year or vice versa
- When the person's own house could be smaller in size and the person may have moved to a bigger house rented by him/her
- When the children of the person may be studying in the locality of the rented house and during the year it was not possible for him/her to change the school and consequently he/she was not able to move to the new house bought
- Actual HRA received from the employer
- 50 per cent of (basic salary + dearness allowance) for those living in metro cities (40 per cent for non-metros)
- Actual rent paid less 10 per cent of salary
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