Indian tax law gives three separate reliefs to families living with disability or serious illness. Section 154 (old 80U) is a flat ā¹75,000 (ā¹1,25,000 if severe) where you have the disability. Section 127 (old 80DD) is the same flat amount where you maintain a dependant with a disability. Section 128 (old 80DDB) reimburses actual spending on a specified disease, capped at ā¹40,000 ā ā¹1,00,000 if the patient is a senior citizen. All three are old-regime deductions, and all three stand or fall on the certificate.
Indian tax law recognises that a family living with disability or a serious illness carries costs that never appear on a salary slip ā the therapy sessions, the attendant, the wheelchair that has to be replaced every few years, the dialysis, the drugs that no insurer fully covers. It answers with three separate deductions, and the most common and most expensive mistake families make is treating them as one. Section 154 (the old Section 80U) gives a flat deduction to a taxpayer who is themselves a person with disability ā you do not have to spend a rupee to claim it. Section 127 (the old Section 80DD) gives a flat deduction to a taxpayer who maintains a dependant with disability, covering treatment, training, rehabilitation and premiums on approved insurance or annuity schemes for that dependant. Section 128 (the old Section 80DDB) is different in character: it reimburses actual expenditure on treating a specified disease, for yourself or a dependant, capped at a limit that is higher for senior citizens. Two of the three are flat; one is expenditure-based. All three are old-regime deductions ā and that single fact decides, for many families, which regime they should be filing under at all.
The practical shape of the year, then, is this. Establish which of the three (or which combination) you qualify for. Get the right certificate from the right authority, in the right form, and keep it alive. Decide your regime with the deduction in the arithmetic rather than as an afterthought. Then claim it in the return with documentation you could hand to an officer without flinching. This guide walks through each of those steps in the order a family actually meets them, with worked figures, because the difference between a claim that survives and a claim that gets disallowed is almost never the law ā it is the paperwork.
Before the detail, hold the map in your head. The three provisions differ on who is affected, what triggers the deduction, and how much you get.
Note what this structure implies. Sections 154 and 127 are disability provisions and are deliberately insulated from proof of spending, because the state accepts that the cost of disability is continuous, diffuse and often impossible to invoice. Section 128 is a disease provision and behaves like a reimbursement ā it wants receipts. A family can quite legitimately claim more than one of these in the same year: a taxpayer with a disability who is also paying for a parent's cancer treatment claims under both 154 and 128, and the two do not reduce each other. What you cannot do is claim both 154 and 127 in respect of the same person ā 154 is for you, 127 is for someone dependent on you, and one human being cannot be both.
This is the simplest of the three and the most under-claimed, largely because taxpayers assume a deduction must be tied to a bill. It is not. If you are a resident individual and you have been certified as a person with disability, you are entitled to a flat deduction of ā¹75,000 from your gross total income ā regardless of whether your disability cost you anything at all during the year. If the certification is of severe disability ā generally 80% or more ā the deduction rises to ā¹1,25,000. There is no proportionality: a person certified at 45% and a person certified at 75% both take ā¹75,000, because the statute recognises two bands rather than a sliding scale. Cross the 80% line and you move to the higher band in full.
Three conditions carry all the weight. First, you must be a resident for the year ā a non-resident individual cannot claim it, however the certification reads. Second, the deduction belongs to the individual only: a Hindu Undivided Family cannot claim it, and a person cannot claim it on someone else's behalf under this section (that is what Section 127 is for). Third, and this is where claims fail, you must hold a valid disability certificate issued by the prescribed medical authority, and you must furnish it ā in practice by filing Form 10-IA where the disability is one of the categories for which that form is prescribed ā for the year in which you claim.
What counts as a disability for this purpose follows the disability legislation rather than the tax law's own imagination. The recognised conditions include blindness and low vision, leprosy cured, hearing impairment, locomotor disability, intellectual disability, mental illness, autism, cerebral palsy and multiple disabilities. The threshold is not less than 40% of any of these as certified by a medical authority; severe disability means 80% or more, and also covers severe multiple disability, severe autism and severe cerebral palsy as those are defined under the relevant welfare statutes. If your certificate carries a percentage figure, that figure decides your band. If it certifies "severe" without a number ā common for autism and cerebral palsy ā the certification itself is what you rely on, and you should keep the assessing authority's wording exactly as issued rather than paraphrasing it in your records.
One practical point families often miss: the deduction does not reduce because you are also receiving a disability pension, an employer's assistance, or benefits under a state scheme. Section 154 is not a reimbursement, so there is nothing for those receipts to offset. It sits alongside your other old-regime deductions ā the ā¹1.5 lakh under Section 123 (old 80C), health insurance under Section 126 (old 80D), interest on deposits under Section 153 ā and reduces your taxable income before the slabs are applied. For a taxpayer in the 30% band with a severe-disability certificate, ā¹1,25,000 off the taxable income is roughly ā¹39,000 of tax saved once cess is counted, every single year, for a claim that requires no receipts at all.
Section 127 turns entirely on this word, and it is defined narrowly enough that guessing is dangerous. For an individual taxpayer, a dependant means the taxpayer's spouse, children, parents, brothers and sisters, or any of them. For a Hindu Undivided Family, it means any member of the family. That list is exhaustive: a nephew, a grandchild, an in-law, a cousin or a family friend cannot be a dependant for this section however genuinely you support them, and a claim in respect of such a person will not survive examination.
Beyond relationship, there is the substantive test the word itself imposes: the person must be wholly or mainly dependent on the taxpayer for their support and maintenance. A sibling with an independent income and their own household is not your dependant merely because they are your sibling. Conversely, a parent living in your home whose only receipts are a small pension plainly is. Where two siblings both support a disabled parent, only one of them can claim in respect of that parent for a given year ā the deduction attaches to the dependant, not to each supporter, and the family should decide deliberately (usually in favour of whoever is in the higher tax band) rather than both claiming and inviting a mismatch.
There is one further exclusion that catches people out and is worth stating plainly: the dependant must not have claimed a deduction under Section 154 (old 80U) for themselves in the same year. The law will relieve the disability once ā either in the hands of the person who has it, or in the hands of the person who maintains them, but not both. If your adult son with a disability files his own return and takes the ā¹75,000 under 154 against his salary, you cannot also take ā¹75,000 under 127 in respect of him. Where the dependant has little or no taxable income of their own, the deduction is worth far more in the supporting taxpayer's hands, and the family should simply not claim it in the dependant's return. This is a decision worth making once, writing down, and keeping consistent year to year.
Where you maintain a dependant with disability, Section 127 gives you a flat deduction of ā¹75,000, or ā¹1,25,000 where that dependant's disability is severe (80% or more). Like Section 154, the amount does not scale with what you spent. Unlike Section 154, there is a triggering condition: you must have either incurred expenditure on the dependant's medical treatment (including nursing), training and rehabilitation, or paid or deposited under an approved scheme for their maintenance. Having done one of those things, you take the full flat amount even if the expenditure was ā¹9,000 ā the statute asks whether you incurred it, not how much.
The expenditure limb is deliberately broad, and families under-appreciate how much falls inside it. "Medical treatment including nursing" covers doctors, hospital visits, therapy and an attendant. "Training and rehabilitation" is wider still: special education, occupational therapy, speech therapy, physiotherapy, mobility training, vocational training, and the aids and appliances that make those possible. If you are paying for a special school, a therapist, a caregiver or a wheelchair for a dependant on your list, the condition is met many times over ā and it is worth keeping those invoices even though the deduction is flat, because they are your evidence that the triggering condition existed at all.
The second limb ā the insurance or annuity scheme ā deserves its own attention because it is the more consequential planning tool and the least understood. The section permits a deduction where the taxpayer pays or deposits under a scheme framed by the LIC or another insurer, or by an approved administrator, for the maintenance of the dependant, and the scheme provides for payment of an annuity or a lump sum for the benefit of the dependant in the event of the taxpayer's death. This is not ordinary life insurance. It is a structure designed for the situation every parent of a disabled child privately dreads: what happens when I am gone. The scheme must nominate the dependant (or a trust for their benefit) as beneficiary, and the policy must be one that qualifies under these rules ā an off-the-shelf endowment plan will not do.
Two conditions attach to that annuity limb, and they are strict. First, if the dependant predeceases the taxpayer, the amount paid or deposited under the scheme is treated as the taxpayer's income in the year it is received back ā the relief is clawed back, because the purpose it was given for has fallen away. Second, the taxpayer must nominate the dependant or a trust for the dependant's benefit, and the scheme must actually pay out on the taxpayer's death or on their attaining a specified age. Families who set up such a scheme should keep the policy document, the nomination and the premium receipts permanently, not merely for the seven-odd years one usually keeps tax papers ā the document's job is to prove a structure, and that job outlives any assessment.
Section 128 has a different logic from the other two. It is not about disability status; it is about money actually spent treating a serious illness. A resident individual (or a HUF) who has actually paid for the medical treatment of a specified disease or ailment ā for themselves or for a dependant ā may deduct the amount actually paid, subject to a ceiling of ā¹40,000. Where the patient is a senior citizen, the ceiling rises to ā¹1,00,000. The word "actually paid" is doing real work: this is a reimbursement-shaped deduction, and if you spent ā¹18,000 you deduct ā¹18,000, not ā¹40,000.
The dependant definition here mirrors the one under Section 127 ā spouse, children, parents, brothers and sisters for an individual; any member for a HUF ā and the same "wholly or mainly dependent" test applies. The relief therefore reaches the most common real-world case in Indian families: an adult child paying for an elderly parent's dialysis, chemotherapy or neurological care. Because the higher ā¹1,00,000 ceiling depends on the age of the patient and not the age of the person paying, a 40-year-old taxpayer funding a 72-year-old mother's treatment gets the senior-citizen limit. That is frequently the single largest deduction such a taxpayer has, and it is missed with depressing regularity.
The relief is confined to a defined list of grave conditions rather than to serious illness generally. Broadly, the specified diseases and ailments are:
Two consequences follow. First, expensive illnesses that fall outside the list ā a cardiac bypass, a joint replacement, most autoimmune conditions, diabetes ā do not qualify under Section 128, however large the bills. The route for those is health insurance relief under Section 126 (old 80D), which is why a family facing chronic medical costs should treat insurance and this deduction as complements rather than alternatives; see our guide on Section 80D health insurance deductions. Second, the neurological limb is the only one with its own percentage threshold ā for those conditions the certificate must show disability of 40% or more, whereas cancer, renal failure, AIDS, haemophilia and thalassaemia qualify on diagnosis without a percentage.
Section 128 is the only one of the three that requires a prescription from a specialist, and it is the requirement that sinks most claims. The deduction is allowed only if the taxpayer furnishes a prescription for the treatment, issued by a specialist of the relevant discipline. The specialism must match the disease: a neurologist with a doctorate-level qualification in neurology for the neurological conditions; an oncologist for malignant cancers; a specialist in immunology or an equivalent discipline for AIDS; a nephrologist or urologist for chronic renal failure; and a haematologist or specialist in internal medicine for haemophilia and thalassaemia. Where the patient is being treated in a government hospital, the prescription may be issued by a full-time specialist working in that hospital, and the prescription should carry the hospital's name and address.
The prescription must identify the patient by name and age, state the name of the disease, and carry the name, address, registration number and qualification of the issuing specialist. A discharge summary, a hospital bill, or a general physician's letter is not a substitute, however plainly it shows that the illness exists. The single most common reason a genuine Section 128 claim is disallowed is that the family had a mountain of invoices and no specialist prescription in the prescribed shape ā the money was undoubtedly spent, but the statutory condition was never met. Get the prescription at the time of treatment, from the treating specialist, in writing. Reconstructing it three years later during an assessment is difficult, sometimes impossible, and always avoidable.
It is worth adding that the older requirement of a certificate in a particular numbered form has been replaced by this simpler prescription requirement, which is a genuine improvement for families ā a treating oncologist can issue it as part of ordinary care. What has not changed is that something in writing from the right specialist is mandatory. Treat it as part of the treatment file, alongside the reports, and scan it the day you receive it.
For the two disability deductions ā Sections 154 and 127 ā everything rests on a valid certificate from the prescribed medical authority. That authority is not any doctor. It is a Civil Surgeon or Chief Medical Officer of a government hospital, or, for the specific conditions of autism, cerebral palsy and multiple disabilities, a neurologist with a doctorate-level qualification in neurology (or a paediatric neurologist with the equivalent qualification where the person is a child). The certificate is issued after assessment and states the nature of the disability and its extent as a percentage, which is what places you in the ā¹75,000 band or the ā¹1,25,000 severe band.
Where the disability is autism, cerebral palsy or multiple disability, the certification is furnished in Form 10-IA, which the medical authority completes and signs. In other cases the certificate issued under the disability legislation by the competent authority ā the standard disability certificate most families already hold from the district medical board ā serves the purpose. Practically, the disability certificate you obtained for a railway concession, a reserved seat or a welfare scheme is usually the same document your CA needs, and families are often pleasantly surprised to find they have had the key paperwork in a drawer for years without realising it unlocked a tax deduction too.
Expiry and renewal is the trap. Many disability certificates are issued for a fixed period rather than permanently ā particularly where the condition is one that may improve or requires periodic reassessment. The rule is straightforward and unforgiving: if the certificate expires during a tax year, you may still claim the deduction for the year in which it expired, but for any subsequent year you must hold a fresh certificate. A family that claimed comfortably for six years and then quietly kept claiming on a certificate that lapsed in year four is exposed for every year after the lapse. Put the expiry date in a calendar the day the certificate is issued, and start the renewal process a few months ahead, because government medical boards do not move quickly and a gap in certification is a gap in your claim.
Two more mechanical points. The certificate must be in force for the relevant tax year ā a certificate obtained after the year has ended does not retrospectively cover it unless it is the renewal of a certificate that was in force. And you do not attach the certificate to the return itself; you retain it and produce it if asked. Filing without attachment is normal; being unable to produce it later is fatal.
This applies to Section 128 only, and it is the mechanic most likely to turn an over-claim into a penalty. Because Section 128 relieves the amount actually paid by you, any part of that cost that comes back to you is not, in substance, borne by you. The statute therefore requires that the deduction be reduced by any amount received under an insurance policy, or reimbursed by an employer, in respect of the same medical treatment. The arithmetic is: amount actually spent, minus insurance or employer reimbursement, and then apply the ā¹40,000 or ā¹1,00,000 cap to what is left.
An example makes the order of operations clear. Suppose ā¹3,20,000 is spent on a senior citizen parent's chemotherapy and the health insurer settles ā¹2,60,000. The out-of-pocket cost is ā¹60,000. That is below the ā¹1,00,000 senior-citizen ceiling, so the deduction is ā¹60,000 ā not ā¹1,00,000, and certainly not ā¹3,20,000. Had the insurer settled only ā¹1,90,000, the out-of-pocket would be ā¹1,30,000, the cap would bite, and the deduction would be ā¹1,00,000. Note also the timing wrinkle that catches families whose claim is settled in the following year: the reduction attaches to the reimbursement for that treatment, so if you claimed the full amount in year one and the insurer paid in year two, you should revisit rather than ignore the position.
Sections 154 and 127 do not work this way. They are flat entitlements, not reimbursements, so an insurance payout, a disability pension, an employer's medical assistance or a state welfare benefit does not reduce them at all. This distinction is worth stating clearly to any family member helping with the paperwork, because the instinct to "net off everything we received" is strong and, applied to 154 or 127, simply gives away money you are entitled to.
All three of these deductions are old-regime deductions. Under the new regime, which is now the default, the great majority of Chapter-VI-A style deductions are switched off ā including Sections 123 (old 80C), 126 (old 80D), 127, 128 and 154. The new regime pays for that with wider slabs, a lower effective rate at most income levels and a larger rebate under Section 156 (old 87A). For most salaried taxpayers with modest deductions, that trade is favourable and they should be in the new regime without much soul-searching.
Families dealing with disability or serious illness are precisely the group for whom the trade often runs the other way, and the arithmetic deserves to be done properly rather than assumed. Consider a taxpayer with a severely disabled child and a parent under cancer treatment: ā¹1,25,000 under Section 127, up to ā¹1,00,000 under Section 128, ā¹1,50,000 under Section 123, and health insurance premiums under Section 126 can easily total ā¹4,00,000 or more of deductions that vanish the moment you select the new regime. At a 30% marginal rate that is over a lakh of tax. Whether the old regime still wins depends on your income level and on how much of that headroom you genuinely use, but the point is that the default is not automatically right for you, and a family in this position should have the comparison run in actual numbers each year rather than ticking whatever was ticked last year.
The mechanics of choosing also differ by income type. A salaried taxpayer with no business income may choose the regime afresh each year at the time of filing, and ā importantly ā may choose the old regime in the return even if they told their employer otherwise at the start of the year. A taxpayer with business or professional income has far less flexibility: opting out of the new regime is a considered step with restrictions on switching back, and should be planned rather than discovered in July. If your household's deduction profile is driven by a long-term disability, the old regime is likely to be a multi-year position, and that is an argument for making the choice deliberately and documenting the reasoning.
Senior citizens have their own overlay of reliefs that interacts with all of this ā a higher basic exemption in the old regime, the larger Section 128 ceiling, and deposit-interest relief under Section 153. If the patient or the taxpayer in your household is 60 or above, work through our guide on tax benefits for senior citizens before fixing the regime, because those items frequently tip a marginal comparison decisively towards the old regime.
Rahul is 34, salaried, and has a locomotor disability certified at 85% ā severe. His gross salary is ā¹14,00,000. He has no dependants with disability and no specified-disease expenditure. Under the old regime he takes the standard deduction from salary under Section 19 of ā¹50,000, ā¹1,50,000 under Section 123 (PF and an ELSS investment), ā¹25,000 of health insurance under Section 126, and ā the item at issue ā ā¹1,25,000 under Section 154 for severe disability, requiring no receipts whatsoever.
His deductions total ā¹3,50,000, bringing taxable income to ā¹10,50,000. Without the Section 154 claim his taxable income would have been ā¹11,75,000. The ā¹1,25,000 sits squarely in his 30% marginal band, so the claim alone is worth roughly ā¹37,500 plus 4% cess ā about ā¹39,000 of tax every year. Rahul obtained his certificate at 22 and it is a permanent certification, so the recurring administrative cost of this ā¹39,000 is precisely zero. He should still confirm the old-versus-new comparison, but with ā¹3,50,000 of deductions at this income the old regime is very likely ahead.
Priya is 41 and earns ā¹22,00,000 a year. Her 12-year-old son has autism, certified as severe in Form 10-IA by a paediatric neurologist. She spends about ā¹4,80,000 a year on his special school, speech therapy and an attendant, and she pays ā¹60,000 a year into an approved LIC annuity scheme that will pay him an annuity on her death, with him nominated as beneficiary. Separately, her 71-year-old mother ā dependent on her ā is being treated for chronic renal failure; dialysis and drugs cost ā¹2,40,000 in the year, of which the insurer reimbursed ā¹1,55,000.
Her claims run as follows. Under Section 127, because her son's disability is severe, she deducts the flat ā¹1,25,000 ā note that she does not get ā¹4,80,000 despite spending it; the deduction is flat, and her spending merely proves the condition was triggered. The ā¹60,000 annuity premium does not add a separate deduction either; it is an alternative trigger for the same flat amount, though it is enormously valuable as protection. Under Section 128, her out-of-pocket cost on her mother's treatment is ā¹2,40,000 ā ā¹1,55,000 = ā¹85,000. Her mother is a senior citizen, so the ceiling is ā¹1,00,000 and the full ā¹85,000 is deductible. She holds a nephrologist's prescription naming her mother, her mother's age and the disease.
Together these two provisions give her ā¹2,10,000 of deductions. Add ā¹50,000 under Section 19, ā¹1,50,000 under Section 123 and ā¹75,000 of health insurance under Section 126 (ā¹25,000 for her family plus ā¹50,000 for her senior-citizen mother) and her total deductions are ā¹4,85,000. At a 30% marginal rate that is close to ā¹1,51,000 of tax saved ā which is exactly why the new regime, for Priya, would be an expensive default to accept unexamined.
Anil is 52, income ā¹18,00,000, and is himself being treated for a malignant cancer. Treatment in the year cost ā¹6,50,000; his corporate health policy reimbursed ā¹6,20,000. His out-of-pocket cost is ā¹30,000. He is not a senior citizen, so his ceiling is ā¹40,000 ā but the cap is irrelevant here because the actual out-of-pocket figure is lower. His Section 128 deduction is ā¹30,000, worth about ā¹9,360 of tax at 30% with cess.
Anil's instinct was to claim ā¹40,000 ā "the limit" ā and it is a very common error. Had he done so, and had the return been picked up for examination under Section 270 (old 143), the department would have compared the insurer's settlement with the hospital bills and disallowed ā¹10,000, with interest and potentially a penalty for under-reporting. The lesson generalises: under Section 128 the number you write is your net out-of-pocket cost or the ceiling, whichever is lower ā never the ceiling by default. A useful contrast: if Anil had also had a certified disability, his Section 154 claim would have been the full flat amount regardless of the insurer paying 95% of his treatment, because 154 is not a reimbursement at all.
None of these are filed with the return. All of them decide whether the claim survives.
Employers routinely omit these deductions. Some HR systems do not collect the declaration at all; others decline to give effect to Section 128 because verifying a prescription is not something a payroll team wants to do; and many employees, understandably, do not want to disclose a family member's illness or a child's disability to their employer. The consequence is that your Form 16 shows more taxable salary and more TDS than you actually owe ā and that is not a problem, because the return, not Form 16, is the final word.
You claim it directly in the ITR. Enter the deduction in the Chapter VI-A schedule of the return ā the fields corresponding to Sections 127, 128 and 154 as labelled in the utility ā with the same figures you would have declared to the employer, and complete the accompanying particulars the utility asks for, typically the nature of the disability, whether it is severe, and the details of the certificate. Your gross salary stays exactly as reported in Form 16; only the deductions change. The tax recomputes, the TDS your employer already deducted is credited against the lower liability, and the difference comes back to you as a refund. This is entirely routine and is not a red flag in itself.
Two cautions. First, make sure you have selected the old regime in the return before entering these, or the utility will accept the figures and give you nothing. Salaried filers may choose the old regime at filing even if the employer applied the new regime for TDS ā which is precisely how a family whose employer computed TDS on the default basis recovers the benefit. Second, do not adjust the salary figure to compensate; mismatches between the salary you report and the salary in your Form 16 and Form 26AS are among the most reliably flagged discrepancies in the system. Report the salary as it is and take the deduction where the deduction belongs.
When a return is examined under Section 270 (old 143), disability and medical deductions attract attention because they are large, flat and hard for the system to cross-verify automatically against third-party data. The failures follow a small number of recurring patterns, and every one of them is preventable at the time of claiming rather than at the time of defending.
The commonest is simply the absent or expired certificate. The disability is real, the family is real, the expenditure is real ā and the certificate lapsed three years ago, or was never obtained because everyone in the household knew the condition and nobody thought a piece of paper was required. The officer is not permitted to accept the facts without the statutory document. The second commonest is a certificate from the wrong authority: a treating doctor, a private hospital, or a specialist who is not the prescribed medical authority. For Sections 154 and 127 the certificate must come from a Civil Surgeon or CMO of a government hospital, or the qualified neurologist for the specified conditions; a sympathetic private consultant's letter, however senior, does not qualify.
The third is the Section 128 prescription gap ā invoices in abundance, no specialist prescription, or a prescription from a specialist whose discipline does not match the disease. The fourth is claiming the ceiling instead of the actual spend under Section 128, usually after an insurer has reimbursed most of the cost; this is easy for an officer to test because the insurer's settlement and the hospital's bills tell the whole story. The fifth is a relationship outside the definition ā a claim in respect of a grandchild, a nephew, a father-in-law or a mother-in-law. Parents-in-law are a particularly frequent and painful disallowance, because supporting a spouse's parents is so normal in Indian households that the exclusion feels arbitrary; nonetheless the definition lists the taxpayer's own parents.
The sixth is the double claim: the dependant takes Section 154 in their own return while the supporting taxpayer takes Section 127 in respect of the same person, or two siblings each claim in respect of the same parent. The department can and does see both returns. The seventh is a disease outside the specified list ā a heart procedure, a transplant that is not renal, an autoimmune condition ā claimed under Section 128 in good faith because the illness was serious and the bills were enormous. And the eighth is the quiet one: claiming these deductions while filing under the new regime, which produces no benefit at all and is usually discovered only when the refund is smaller than expected.
The defence in every case is the same, and it is boring: obtain the right document from the right authority at the right time, record what you actually paid and what you actually got back, keep the family's claims consistent across returns, and check the regime before you file. Families in this situation are dealing with enough; a half-hour of filing discipline once a year is a small price for never having to argue about it.
Yes, provided they relate to different people. A taxpayer who has a certified disability themselves and also maintains a dependant with a disability claims ā¹75,000 or ā¹1,25,000 under Section 154 for themselves and, separately, ā¹75,000 or ā¹1,25,000 under Section 127 for the dependant. What is not permitted is both provisions being claimed in respect of the same individual ā if your dependant claims Section 154 in their own return, your Section 127 claim for them fails.
You must have incurred expenditure on the dependant's treatment, training or rehabilitation, or paid into an approved scheme ā so keep the evidence that you did. But the deduction is flat: spending ā¹40,000 and spending ā¹4,00,000 both yield the same ā¹75,000 or ā¹1,25,000. The bills prove the trigger, not the quantum.
ā¹1,00,000, because the higher ceiling under Section 128 depends on the age of the patient, not the age of the person paying. Your own age is irrelevant. You will need an oncologist's prescription naming him and his age, and you must reduce the claim by anything the insurer reimbursed.
No. The definition of "dependant" for an individual covers your spouse, children, parents, brothers and sisters only. Parents-in-law are outside it, however completely they depend on you. If your spouse has taxable income and the parent is genuinely dependent on them, the claim belongs in your spouse's return, which is often the practical answer.
You may still claim for the tax year in which it expired. For every year after that you need a fresh certificate from the prescribed medical authority. Begin the renewal several months before expiry ā medical boards are slow, and a gap in certification means a gap in your entitlement that cannot be repaired retrospectively.
No. Sections 127, 128 and 154 are all old-regime deductions and are unavailable if you file under the new regime, which is the default. For families with substantial disability or illness costs this frequently makes the old regime the better choice ā but it must be tested with your actual numbers each year, not assumed in either direction.
Sections 154 and 128 require the individual to be resident in India for the year, so a non-resident cannot claim them. Section 127 likewise operates for resident individuals and HUFs. An NRI who becomes resident again in a later year can claim from that year onward, subject to holding valid certification.
Unfortunately not. The certificate from the prescribed medical authority is a statutory condition, and an assessing officer has no discretion to waive it however evident the disability. The right response is to obtain the certificate now: it takes time, but once issued it supports your claim for the current year and every year the certificate remains in force ā and it is usually the same document that unlocks welfare, travel and education benefits your family may already be entitled to.
Most of the value in this area is captured by doing three unglamorous things properly. Get certified ā by the correct authority, in the correct form, with the expiry diarised. Get the specialist's prescription at the time of treatment, not when a notice arrives. And choose your regime with the deduction in the arithmetic, every year, rather than accepting a default designed for a household that does not look like yours. Do those three things and the deductions in Sections 127, 128 and 154 become what they were intended to be: a quiet, reliable reduction in the cost of a life that already asks a great deal of the people living it.
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