Special Allowances - (New) Schedule III / (Old) Section 10(14)

Special allowances exemption under income tax covers travel, field-area, education, hostel, and armed forces allowances with prescribed limits.

Income-tax exemption is provided for specified special allowances and benefits to the extent they are actually incurred for the prescribed purpose and are not perquisites. The exemption covers travel, transportation of personal effects on transfer, daily allowance, conveyance where no free conveyance is provided, helper allowance, research and training allowance, and uniform allowance, subject to the condition that the allowance is specifically granted to meet expenses wholly, necessarily and exclusively incurred in the performance of duties of an office or employment of profit. A separate framework covers remote locality, field-area, education, hostel, counter-insurgency, transport, high altitude, underground, island duty, and Siachen allowances, each with prescribed limits, eligibility rules, and area-based conditions.