KVP Calculator

Kisan Vikas Patra sells itself on one promise: put money in, get double back. That promise is true, and it's also incomplete, because the tax comes off the gain and nobody's calculator shows you that. This one does. It runs the current 7.5% rate over the correct 115-month term, shows the interest building year by year, and then tells you the number that actually lands in your hands after tax. It's an educational estimate. For your own return, a chartered accountant is the right person to confirm the figures.

How is KVP maturity calculated?

KVP interest is compounded once a year and paid in full at the end, and the term is set so that your deposit comes back exactly doubled. The formula is A = P × (1 + r/100) raised to the term in years. At 7.5% over 115 months, ₹1,00,000 becomes about ₹1,99,985. It lands a few rupees under a clean double because 115 is itself a rounded number of months.

Nothing is paid out along the way. The interest stays inside the certificate and earns more interest, so the later years do the heavy lifting. Year 1 on a ₹1 lakh deposit earns ₹7,500. The ninth year earns ₹13,376 on the same certificate, for no reason other than the balance being bigger. Here's the full run:

Why is the KVP term 115 months?

The 115-month term isn't a policy choice, it's arithmetic: 115 months is how long money takes to double at 7.5% compounded yearly. Work it backwards and the number falls out. The natural log of 2 divided by the natural log of 1.075 gives 9.584 years, which is 115.0 months. The government publishes the term, but the rate is what decides it.

The historical rows prove the rule. When KVP paid 7.2%, from January to March 2023, the notified term was 120 months, and the same calculation gives 119.6 months. So every time the Ministry of Finance moves the KVP rate, the term moves too. Change the rate in the calculator above and you'll see the term shift with it, which is why the last row of the table is a part-year stub rather than a clean year.

This is also where most KVP calculators go wrong, and it's worth knowing before you trust one. Of five ranking KVP tools I checked on 7 August 2026, three printed the wrong term: two said 9 years 5 months or 9 years 2 months, and one listed a menu of "60, 84, 108 or 124 months" that matches no version of the scheme. The 9 years 5 months figure is real but stale. It's the term for accounts opened between 12 December 2019 and 31 March 2020, and it still sits in the frozen text of the NSI scheme page while the live rate table says 115.

What do you actually keep after tax?

KVP interest is fully taxable at your income-tax slab as income from other sources, so the certificate doubles your money before tax and not after it. There's no Section 80C deduction when you buy, and no TDS is deducted when you're paid, which means the whole gain is taxable and none of it has been collected for you.

On the ₹1 lakh example, the gain is ₹99,985. What survives depends entirely on your slab, and the spread is wide:

A 30% slab taxpayer gets 5.61% a year, not 7.5%. Over 9 years and 7 months, ₹1 lakh becomes ₹1.69 lakh in hand. That's still a government-guaranteed return, and it's a long way from the doubling the scheme's name suggests. None of the five calculators I fetched showed a post-tax figure of any kind, and one of them stated that KVP interest is exempt from income tax while also saying 10% TDS is deducted from it, which can't both be true and isn't true either way.

Because no TDS is taken, declaring the interest is on you. It can be reported yearly as it accrues, or in one lump in the maturity year. The yearly route usually works out better, since a single ₹99,985 addition to income in one year can push you up a slab. Which route fits your return is a question for a chartered accountant.

KVP vs NSC: how they differ

KVP and NSC are both post-office certificates that compound yearly, and the deciding difference is that NSC gets a Section 80C deduction while KVP gets none. They're often shown side by side because they're sold at the same counter, and the tax treatment is where they actually part company.

The headline rates sit 0.2 points apart, so on gross return alone there's little in it. The gap opens on tax. Our NSC calculator shows the same accrual table with the 80C years flagged, which makes the contrast easy to see with your own numbers in both tools.

Lock-in, minimum, and who can buy KVP

KVP is locked for 30 months, takes a minimum of ₹1,000 in multiples of ₹100 with no upper limit, and is open to resident individuals including minors aged 10 and above. Accounts can be held singly or jointly by up to three adults.

The details that matter in practice: there's no maximum deposit and no cap on the number of accounts one person holds, though deposits above ₹10 lakh require documentary proof of income under the standard anti-money-laundering checks. One popular calculator page lists a ₹50 lakh ceiling that the scheme rules simply don't contain. Before the 30 months are up, a certificate can be closed only on the death of a holder, a court order, or forfeiture by a pledgee. After that, premature closure follows a fixed payout table published with the rules, and it pays less than going the distance. A certificate can also be pledged as security for a loan, and transferred between post offices or between people in the situations the rules allow.

What this calculator does not do

It computes the maturity, the year-by-year accrual, and the post-tax position at the slab you pick. It doesn't handle premature closure values, which follow their own published table rather than a formula. It applies a flat slab rate plus 4% cess to the gain, so it won't capture surcharge at high incomes, a slab you cross partway, or the effect of spreading the interest across years on an accrual basis. It assumes the rate you hold is fixed for the whole term, which is how KVP works once bought. And it says nothing about whether KVP suits you, because that depends on your tax position and your other holdings. For that, and for how to declare the interest, a chartered accountant is the right person to ask. This is general education, not tax advice.

Pair this calculator with the guide

The full comparison lives in the NSC vs KVP guide. If the tax deduction is what you're after, the Section 80C explainer lists the ₹1.5 lakh menu that KVP sits outside of, and the Public Provident Fund guide covers the scheme whose interest is exempt rather than taxed. For how slab tax on interest works generally, see the India income tax slabs explainer.

Frequently asked questions

Sources

• National Savings Institute, Ministry of Finance, Kisan Vikas Patra interest rate table (7.5% over 115 months, valid 1.04.2023 to 30.09.2026), nsiindia.gov.in
• National Savings Institute, Kisan Vikas Patra scheme rules (deposits, eligibility, premature closure, pledge and transfer), nsiindia.gov.in
• India Post, Department of Posts, post office savings schemes, indiapost.gov.in
• Income Tax Department of India, income from other sources and slab rates, incometax.gov.in