Capital Gains Tax Calculator
Calculate capital gains tax on shares, mutual funds, property and gold. See whether your gain is short or long term, the section that applies, and the tax due.
Formula last reviewed 14 September 2026 · How we verify our calculators
Tax payable — LTCG
- Capital gain
- ₹3,00,000
- Taxable after exemption
- ₹1,75,000
- Rate applied
- 12.5% + 4% cess
- Gain left after tax
- ₹2,77,250
Updates live as you type
Frequently asked questions
The Finance (No. 2) Act 2024 rewrote the rate structure for transfers on or after 23 July 2024. Short-term gains on listed equity under Section 111A went from 15% to 20%; long-term gains under Section 112A went from 10% to 12.5% but the annual exemption rose from ₹1,00,000 to ₹1,25,000. Indexation was withdrawn across the board, and holding-period thresholds were simplified to just 12 months for listed securities and 24 months for everything else. If you sold before that date, the older rules apply to that transfer.
No — it is a single annual allowance shared across every Section 112A gain you make in the financial year. If you booked ₹80,000 of long-term equity gains in June and ₹1,00,000 in December, the first ₹1.25 lakh in total is exempt and the remaining ₹55,000 is taxed. It also does not carry forward; an unused portion simply lapses at the end of the year, which is why some investors deliberately realise gains up to the limit each year.
Only in one narrow case. If you are a resident individual or HUF and the property was acquired before 23 July 2024, you may choose between 12.5% without indexation and 20% with indexation, and you pay whichever is lower. For property acquired on or after that date, indexation is gone and the rate is a flat 12.5%. Non-residents and companies do not get the choice at all. Because it depends on your cost inflation index figures, the option is worth computing properly rather than assuming one route wins.
Units of a specified mutual fund bought on or after 1 April 2023 are deemed short-term under Section 50AA no matter how long you hold them, so the gain is added to your income and taxed at your slab rate. There is no long-term treatment and no indexation. Units bought before that date follow the older rules. This is why the asset dropdown here treats debt funds separately — holding period genuinely does not affect the answer.
A capital loss cannot be set off against salary or interest income. A short-term capital loss can be set off against either short-term or long-term gains; a long-term loss can only be set off against long-term gains. Whatever remains can be carried forward for eight assessment years, but only if you file your return by the due date — miss the deadline and the carry-forward is lost. This calculator shows a loss as a negative gain and no tax, but does not model set-off across your other transactions.
There are genuine exemptions. Section 54 lets you reinvest a long-term gain on a residential house into another residential house; Section 54F does something similar when you sell any other long-term asset and buy a house; Section 54EC allows investment of up to ₹50 lakh in specified bonds within six months. Each has strict timelines and conditions, and Section 54 is capped at ₹10 crore. This calculator shows the gross tax before any such exemption, so treat the figure as the amount you would owe if you did nothing.
Yes, capital gains are part of your total income for advance tax. Because a gain is unpredictable, the law allows you to pay the tax on it in the remaining instalments falling due after the sale rather than penalising you retrospectively for earlier instalments. If you realise a large gain in March, the tax is generally due by 15 March or, failing that, before you file. Interest under Sections 234B and 234C applies to shortfalls.
Yes, for listed equity held on 31 January 2018. The cost of acquisition is stepped up to the higher of the actual cost and the fair market value on that date, capped at the sale price. That rule was introduced when LTCG on equity became taxable in 2018 and it has not been withdrawn. This calculator asks for a single purchase price, so for such holdings enter the grandfathered cost rather than what you originally paid.
One day in July 2024 changed every answer on this page
Sell ₹8,00,000 worth of listed shares you bought for ₹5,00,000 and held eighteen months, and the tax is ₹22,750. Sell the identical holding after only six months and it is ₹62,400 — nearly three times as much, on exactly the same ₹3,00,000 profit. The only difference is the calendar.
That gap is the single most useful thing to understand about capital gains, and it got wider in 2024. The Finance (No. 2) Act, applying to transfers from 23 July 2024, raised short-term equity tax from 15% to 20%, moved long-term equity from 10% to 12.5%, raised the annual long-term exemption from ₹1 lakh to ₹1.25 lakh, and removed indexation almost everywhere. If you are working from advice written before that date, most of the numbers in it are now wrong.
How the tax is actually built up
A capital gain is not taxed like the rest of your income. It runs through its own chain:
Gain = Sale price − Purchase price − Costs of transfer and improvement
Brokerage, stamp duty, legal fees and money genuinely spent improving the asset all reduce the gain. Ordinary maintenance does not.
That gain is then classified as short-term or long-term by holding period, and the threshold depends on the asset:
- Listed shares and equity mutual funds: 12 months.
- Property, gold, unlisted shares and most other assets: 24 months.
- Debt mutual funds bought on or after 1 April 2023: no threshold at all — Section 50AA deems them short-term forever.
Finally a rate is applied, and only here does the asset class matter again:
- Section 111A — short-term listed equity: 20%
- Section 112A — long-term listed equity: 12.5%, but only on the gain above a ₹1,25,000 annual exemption
- Section 112 — long-term property, gold, unlisted shares: 12.5%, no exemption
- Slab rate — short-term property and gold, and all post-April-2023 debt funds
Add 4% health and education cess to whatever comes out. That cess is why a headline 12.5% is really 13%, and 20% is really 20.8%.
The exemption is annual, not per trade
The ₹1.25 lakh under Section 112A is the most misunderstood number here. It is one allowance for the whole financial year, spread across every long-term equity gain you book. Three separate sales of ₹60,000 each do not get ₹1.25 lakh of relief three times — they get it once, between them. It also expires unused at year end, which is the mechanical reason many investors deliberately realise about ₹1.25 lakh of gains each March and immediately buy back: the exemption resets, and their cost base steps up for free.
Worked example: a flat sold after five years
Bought for ₹40,00,000, sold for ₹60,00,000, with ₹1,50,000 of brokerage and registration costs on the sale, held 60 months.
- Gain = ₹60,00,000 − ₹40,00,000 − ₹1,50,000 = ₹18,50,000
- 60 months is past the 24-month threshold, so this is long-term under Section 112
- No ₹1.25 lakh exemption — that belongs to equity alone
- Tax = 12.5% × ₹18,50,000 = ₹2,31,250
- Cess = 4% × ₹2,31,250 = ₹9,250
- Total: ₹2,40,500
Now suppose the flat had been bought in 2019, before the cut-off. As a resident individual you would get to compare routes. If indexation lifted the cost from ₹40,00,000 to roughly ₹52,00,000, the indexed gain would be ₹6,50,000, taxed at 20% = ₹1,30,000 — meaningfully less than ₹2,31,250, so you would choose that route. For a property bought after July 2024 the comparison does not exist and 12.5% simply applies.
Note also what happens if you sell the same flat at month 20 instead: it is short-term, the gain is added to your income, and at a 30% slab the tax becomes roughly ₹5,77,200. Four extra months of holding would have saved over ₹3.3 lakh.
When to run this before you sell
The calculation is most valuable before the transaction, not at filing time, because almost every lever stops working once the sale is done.
Approaching a holding-period threshold. If you are at month 10 on a share or month 22 on a flat, the arithmetic above is usually enough to justify waiting.
Deciding what to sell to raise a given amount of cash. Two holdings worth the same today can carry very different tax, depending on cost base and holding period. Selling the higher-cost-base holding first often raises the same cash for less tax.
Planning around the March year-end. Both the ₹1.25 lakh exemption and the loss carry-forward rules key off the financial year.
Weighing a reinvestment exemption. Sections 54, 54F and 54EC can eliminate property gains entirely, but they run on tight deadlines — six months for 54EC bonds, two years to buy or three to construct under Section 54 — and those clocks start at the sale.
Reading your result
The headline figure is the tax on this one transfer in isolation. Three things it deliberately does not do:
It does not set off your losses. If you have losses elsewhere in the year, your real liability is lower — short-term losses can be set against either kind of gain, long-term losses only against long-term gains.
It does not apply reinvestment exemptions. Treat the number as the tax if you do nothing further.
It does not know your other income. Where the gain is slab-taxed, it uses the rate you selected; if the gain itself pushes you into a higher slab, the true figure is higher. Surcharge, which starts above ₹50 lakh of total income, is also outside this calculation.
The rate applied line is worth checking every time, because it tells you which section the calculator decided you were in — and if that is not what you expected, the holding period or asset class is usually the reason.
Where people go wrong
Counting the holding period from the wrong date. It runs from the date of acquisition to the date of transfer. For inherited or gifted assets, you inherit the previous owner's holding period *and* their cost, which frequently converts an apparently short-term gain into a long-term one.
Forgetting the 2018 grandfathering on old shares. Listed equity held on 31 January 2018 gets its cost stepped up to the fair market value on that date. Using the original 2012 purchase price instead overstates the gain, sometimes enormously.
Assuming debt funds still get indexation. For units bought on or after 1 April 2023 there is no long-term treatment at all. This catches people who bought on advice given before the 2023 change.
Treating STT as a deductible cost. Securities transaction tax is specifically not allowed as a deduction against capital gains, unlike brokerage.
Missing the filing deadline when sitting on losses. Losses are carried forward only if the return is filed on time. It is an unusually harsh rule and a common, expensive oversight.
Ignoring advance tax. A large gain in the first half of the year creates an advance tax obligation, and Sections 234B and 234C charge interest on the shortfall.
This page explains the general rules and cannot account for residency status, business income treatment where trading is frequent enough to be a business, slump sales, or the many asset-specific exemptions. For a large or unusual transaction, have a chartered accountant check the position before you file.