Legality of large rent (75k) paid to parents for HRA deduction

Andravish (Software Engineer) (14 Points)

25 August 2022  

Hello all,

I will soon be starting work and my employment contract gives me an HRA of 9 lakh per annum (75k per month).

Since I live with my parents, in order to minimise income tax, I am planning to create a rental agreement with my retired father as the landlord. I will pay him 75k rent monthly via bank transfer. We will also show the same as rental income in my father's ITR.

Since my father is a senior citizen, the income tax on the rental income my father will pay would be much lesser than the income tax I would pay in the highest tax bracket.

Will this be legal?
Will paying such high rent raise any questions later?

Thanks in advance for your kind advise and counsel.

P.S: I have read other posts here regarding paying rent to parents, most of them have mixed answers(some saying yes, some saying no), so I created this separate post to specifically enquire whether such large amount of rent would be allowed or not.