Tax relief on cancer treatment

There are deductions available in India for expenditure on specified illnesses, and cancer is among them. The claim needs a prescribed certificate from a specialist, and the amount depends on rules that change from year to year and on the patient's age.

This page deliberately gives no figures, because a number printed here would be wrong for somebody reading it next year. What it can do is tell you what to collect, what certificate to ask the hospital for, and who should actually work out your claim.

The certificate is the part patients must arrange

Deductions for a specified illness require a prescription or certificate from a specialist in the prescribed form. Ask your hospital which form they issue and who signs it, because getting this late in the financial year is considerably harder.

Separate claims may also apply

Health insurance premiums, expenditure on a dependant with a disability, and treatment expenditure are treated under different provisions. Which apply to you depends on your situation, so ask about all of them rather than only the one you have heard of.

It cannot tell you how much you can claim, and it is not tax advice. Limits, eligible expenditure and the prescribed forms are set by rules that change, and they differ with the patient's age and with what has been reimbursed. Any figure here would mislead somebody.

It also cannot tell you whether you personally qualify. That depends on your income, who paid, who the patient is and what insurance covered. Somebody qualified needs to look at your documents.

A deduction is not a refund of your spending

It reduces the income on which tax is calculated. The benefit is therefore a fraction of what you spent, not the whole of it, and it is worth understanding that before building any plan around it.

It only helps if you pay tax

For families below the tax threshold, these provisions do nothing. For them the useful routes are government treatment schemes, charitable trusts and hospital concessions, and the medical social worker is a more important person to see than an accountant.

The file is worth keeping for other reasons too

The same bundle of bills, receipts and settlement statements is what an insurer wants for reimbursement, what a charitable trust asks for, and what a scheme application needs. Building it once serves all of those, so even a family that pays no income tax has good reason to keep it properly from the first appointment rather than assembling it under pressure later.

What to do next

Ask the hospital today which prescribed certificate they issue and who signs it. Start one file for every bill and receipt, photographed as it arrives. Pay through the bank where you can. Record what the insurer reimbursed. And take the whole file to a qualified adviser.