Rent Receipts for HRA, and What Gets Them Rejected

Every January your payroll team asks for proof, and every January a pile of it comes back. A rejected receipt is not a formality — it is the exemption for that month gone.

What has to be on it

• The landlord’s name and address
• Your name as the tenant
• The address of the rented property
• The period the receipt covers — one month, clearly stated
• The amount, in figures and in words
• The date and the landlord’s signature
• The landlord’s PAN, where required — see below
• A revenue stamp where the cash payment crosses the state’s threshold

Amount in words is the one people skip. It is also the one that stops a figure being altered after signing, which is exactly why it is asked for.

The PAN rule people get backwards

The landlord’s name, address and PAN are required when the rent you pay during the year exceeds ₹1,00,000 — roughly ₹8,333 a month.

Not the HRA you claim. Not the exempt amount. The rent paid. This gets misquoted constantly, and getting it wrong in the cautious direction is harmless while getting it wrong the other way costs you the claim. If your annual rent crosses the line, you need the PAN even when your exemption works out to far less.

Where the landlord genuinely has no PAN, get a signed declaration from them saying so.

The new question: your relationship with the landlord

Under the Income-tax Rules, 2026, the declaration you give your employer is Form 124 — it replaced Form 12BB. One thing on it is new: if you claim HRA, you must declare your relationship with the landlord, if any.

Paying rent to a parent

Legal, and always has been. It is also the arrangement most often claimed on paper and not in fact, which is why the new question exists.

Declaring the relationship does not disallow anything. If the arrangement is real, nothing changes:

• The property must genuinely be owned by them, not by you
• The rent must actually leave your account — bank transfer or UPI, not cash
• They must declare it as income in their own return

An arrangement that exists only in a receipt book is now easy to spot, and it is treated as evasion rather than planning.

Four things that get receipts rejected

One receipt for the whole year. Payroll wants the months, individually. A single annual receipt is the fastest way to be asked again.

No landlord signature. A typed name is not a signature.

Round numbers that don’t match the bank. If ₹12,000 leaves your account each month, the receipt should say ₹12,000 — not ₹12,500 because that made the exemption work better.

Receipts written in January for the whole year, in one pen, on consecutive numbers. It looks exactly like what it is.

Generate the year in one go

Enter the rent, the months and the landlord’s details once, and the rent receipt format produces numbered receipts for the whole period, each with the amount in words and space for the signature and stamp. Print them, get them signed as you go rather than all at once in January.

Before you file anything, run your own numbers through the HRA calculator — the exemption is the least of three amounts, and it is worth knowing which one is binding for you. The figure your payroll assumed is an assumption.