If you have to avail of the tax benefit on House Rent Allowance (HRA), you need to submit rent receipts for the financial year along with the rental agreement to your employer as part of income tax documents. You are also required to provide the PAN number of your landlord in case the rent amount for the year exceeds INR 1 lakh. You can provide rent receipts on a monthly, quarterly, half-yearly, or on annual basis.

What are rent receipts and their uses?

A rent receipt is a documentary record of rent payment transactions to your landlord. Your landlord will provide the rent receipt upon collecting the rent, which can be used for tax and legal purposes. Following are the important elements of rent receipt:

Date of rent payment
Rental period
Landlord name
Your name as a tenant
Address of the rented house
PAN number of your landlord (if the annual rent exceeds INR 1 lakh)
Signature of the landlord
Revenue stamp (For cash payment of more than INR 5,000. Revenue stamp is not required for cheque payments)
Rent receipts can be used for the following purposes:

You can use rent receipts as proof of your expenses to claim tax benefits. You can avoid the last-minute hassles by arranging it online. You can generate rent receipts using the free rent receipt generator available online.
A rent receipt is also a legal document that endorses the payment made by you to your landlord for the rented house.
How to generate rent receipts?

House rent allowance that comes as a part of your job cost-to company (CTC) is also a tax avenue. In order to avail of the tax exemption benefit provided under Section 10(13A) of the Income Tax Act, 1961, you need to generate rent receipts get them signed by your landlord to submit them to the Human Resource Department of your employer. There is a free rent receipt generator that can help you generate rent receipts in no time. Here is a simple process to follow to generate rent receipt from ETMONEY’s free rent receipt generator:

Step 1: Log on to the ETmoney website

Step 2: Go to the ‘Rent receipt generator’ tab under the ‘tools and calculators’ section

Step 3: Fill in the required details such as basic details first

Your full name
Monthly rent amount
Step 4: Move on to the next section where you need to provide details of your rented property

Name of your house owner
House owner’s PAN number
Address of the rented property
Step 5: Move on to fill the last section that requires the below information

Start date of rent receipts
End date of rent receipts
Rent receipt format – monthly/quarterly
Step 6: Your rent receipt in the chosen format will be instantly generated in a PDF format. You can save the generated rent receipts and get them printed to take the landlord’s signature on those rent receipts.

Exempted amount of HRA is least of the below:

The actual amount of HRA that you receive from your employer
40% of your salary (for a non-metro city) and 50% of your salary (for a metro city)
Actual rent paid minus 10% of your salary (Basic + Dearness Allowance)
Use the free rent receipt generator tool which is simple to use for a smooth taxation process.