Boiling tap water does remove chlorine, but the answer depends entirely on which disinfectant your utility uses. Free chlorine is volatile and leaves readily with heat and agitation, so a rolling boil in an open pot drives most of it off. Chloramine, the combined form many systems now use, is far more stable and boiling barely touches it in any practical time.
Free chlorine leaves with heat and agitation
Chlorine added for disinfection stays in the water as a dissolved gas in equilibrium with the air above it. Heat lowers how much the water can hold and the turbulence of boiling constantly refreshes the surface, so it escapes. Letting a jug stand uncovered on the counter does the same thing more slowly, which is why fish keepers and coffee drinkers have used both methods for years.
Chloramine does not behave the same way
Chloramine is chlorine bound to ammonia, and it was adopted precisely because it is persistent through a distribution system rather than escaping on the way. That stability works against you at the stove. A short boil removes little of it, and a long one is impractical for household volumes. If your supply is chloraminated, treat the removal as a filtration job rather than a kitchen one.
Find out which one you actually have
You do not have to guess. Every community water system publishes an annual Consumer Confidence Report, and the EPA maintains a finder for locating yours. The report names the disinfectant in use along with the substances measured over the year. Read that first, because it decides whether boiling is a reasonable trick for your kitchen or a waste of a burner.
What boiling does to the rest of the water
Boiling drives off water as steam and leaves dissolved solids behind, so the minerals in the pot become more concentrated, not less. That is why a kettle scales. It also has no effect on nitrate, dissolved metals or most chemical contaminants, all of which concentrate as the volume falls. Boiling is a disinfection tool and a chlorine trick, and it is not a treatment step for chemistry.
Questions people ask about does boiling tap water remove chlorine
How long do I have to boil water to get chlorine out?
A few minutes at a rolling boil in an uncovered pot removes most free chlorine. Keep the lid off, since a covered pot condenses it back into the water.
Does letting water stand work as well as boiling?
It works on free chlorine, just more slowly, and it needs an open container. It does very little for chloramine, which is the more persistent combined form.
What removes chloramine at home?
Catalytic carbon is the usual answer, used either as a whole-house tank or a point-of-use cartridge sized for the flow it has to treat.