How the calculation works on PKR 5,00,000 / month
500,000 a month is among the highest salaried incomes around, and at this point more than a fifth of your gross goes to income tax. That's 6,000,000 a year, well into the top slab. After the 616,000 fixed amount plus 35% on everything above 4,100,000, your tax is 1,281,000 a year, or about 106,750 a month. Your effective rate is 21.35%, and the rate on anything extra is the full 35%.
That works out to roughly Rs 1,06,750 a month deducted from your gross, leaving you with Rs 3,93,250 take-home. Your effective tax rate is 21.35%, even though your marginal rate is 35%.
What changes if you're not salaried?
At 6,000,000 a year the gap between income types is about as wide as it gets. Non-salaried rates run above the salaried 35% on this band, while PSEB-registered IT export income at a flat 0.25% would shrink a 1,281,000 salaried bill to a small fraction of itself. If you've got genuinely exportable services, that structure decision dwarfs every other tax move you could make.