Capital Gains
Mutual funds, stocks, NPS, PPF, gold, and complete tax planning — data-driven guides to build long-term wealth and minimise your tax outgo.
Capital Gains Tax After Budget 2024: What Changed and How to Plan — LTCG on equity rose from 10% to 12.5%. Property indexation removed. Debt MF still at slab rate. Here's exactly how each change affects you and the planning strategies.
Capital Gains Tax on Mutual Funds FY 2026-27: LTCG, STCG, and the ₹1.25 Lakh Exemption — Budget 2024 changed equity gains tax to 20% short-term and 12.5% long-term above ₹1.25 lakh. Debt funds bought after April 2023 pay at slab rate. Here's the complete fund-by-fund guide.
New Tax Rule 2026: Why the ₹12 Lakh Rebate Doesn't Cover Your Stock Market Gains — Under the new regime, income up to ₹12 lakh is supposed to be tax-free via the Section 87A rebate. But the Finance Act, 2025 explicitly blocks that rebate from offsetting tax on stock and mutual fund capital gains — even when your total income stays under ₹12 lakh.
SGB Capital Gains Tax Exemption Narrowed From FY 2026-27 — What Changes for Existing Holders — Sovereign Gold Bond redemptions have been tax-free for any holder since 2015. Budget 2026 restricts that exemption to original RBI subscribers who hold to the full 8-year maturity — secondary-market buyers lose it even if they hold on. Here's exactly who's affected and when.- Crypto Tax India 2026: The Flat 30% Rule, 1% TDS, and Why Losses Can't Offset Gains (Section 115BBH) — Every rupee of profit from selling Bitcoin, Ethereum, or any other Virtual Digital Asset is taxed at a flat 30% — no long-term rate, no exemption threshold — and a loss on one coin can't be set off against a gain on another. Here's exactly how VDA taxation works for the return you're filing this season.
- Section 54 and 54F Capital Gains Exemption 2026: How to Save Tax When You Sell Property — Sell a house and you claim Section 54. Sell shares, land, or gold and want to buy a house instead, and it's Section 54F — a stricter provision most people don't realise applies differently. Here's exactly what each one requires, the one-house condition that quietly disqualifies claims, and what to do if you miss the reinvestment deadline.
- ESOP Taxation in India 2026: How Employee Stock Options Are Taxed at Exercise and at Sale — ESOPs are taxed twice in India — once as salary the moment you exercise them, and again as capital gains when you eventually sell. Miss the first event and you can owe advance-tax interest on a gain you never actually received as cash. Here's how both stages work, and the startup deferral rule that can push the first tax bill out by years.
TDS on Sale of Property 2026: Section 194IA's 1% Rule, Form 26QB, and What Buyers Get Wrong — Buy a property worth ₹50 lakh or more and the law makes you — the buyer, not the seller — responsible for deducting 1% TDS and filing it within 30 days. Miss the ₹200-a-day late fee window or file against the wrong PAN in a joint purchase, and the mistake is entirely yours to fix, not the seller's.
Capital Loss Set-Off & Carry Forward Rules 2026: Why Your Long-Term Loss Can't Cancel a Short-Term Gain — A long-term capital loss can't offset a short-term capital gain — one of the most misunderstood rules in Indian tax law, and one that quietly costs investors real money every filing season. Here's exactly which loss offsets which gain, why an early draft reform allowing more flexibility got dropped from the final law, and the filing deadline that decides whether an unused loss can be carried forward at all.
RSU Taxation in India 2026: How Restricted Stock Units From a Foreign Employer Are Taxed — RSUs from a US parent company are common at Indian tech and finance offices, and the tax treatment trips up even experienced employees — because unlike ESOPs, there's no exercise price and no exercise date to anchor the calculation. Vesting itself is the tax event. Here's how the perquisite tax at vesting works, why the capital gains rules that apply at sale are stricter than for Indian-listed shares, and the foreign asset disclosure most employees miss entirely.- Tax on Sale of Inherited Property in India 2026: Cost of Acquisition, Indexation, and Capital Gains Rules — Inheriting a house doesn't trigger any tax by itself — but selling it does, and the numbers you plug in aren't the property's value on the day you inherited it. They go back to whatever the original owner paid, sometimes decades earlier.
- Tax-Loss Harvesting in Mutual Funds India 2026: How to Use the ₹1.25 Lakh LTCG Exemption Before March 31 — Every March, gains sit safely under the ₹1.25 lakh LTCG exemption while losses in a different fund go untouched — and both quietly expire on April 1. Tax-loss harvesting is the legal, deliberate act of fixing both before the financial year closes, and India runs it under very different rules than the US.
Share Buyback Taxation in India 2026: Why Buybacks Are Now Taxed Like Dividends — Until October 2024, tendering shares in a company buyback was one of the most tax-efficient ways to book a gain — the company paid the tax, and shareholders kept the proceeds tax-free. That arbitrage is gone. Here's exactly how buyback proceeds are taxed today, and the capital loss most investors don't realise they're also sitting on.- Angel Tax Abolished in India: What Removing Section 56(2)(viib) Means for Startup Investors in 2026 — For over a decade, a startup raising money above its 'fair market value' risked a tax demand on the excess — angel tax. Budget 2024 abolished it for every class of investor from FY 2025-26. Here's exactly what changed, the one-year window in 2023-24 when foreign investors got pulled into the same tax, and the separate FEMA pricing rule this doesn't touch.
Capital Gains Account Scheme (CGAS) India 2026: Save LTCG Tax Without Buying a New Property Immediately — You sold a property, the capital gain is real, and the Section 54 exemption clock is ticking — but you haven't zeroed in on the next house before your ITR is due. The Capital Gains Account Scheme is the government's own parking lot for exactly this gap. Here's how it actually works, and what happens if you miss the reinvestment deadline anyway.- Capital Gains Tax on Unlisted Shares in India 2026: The 24-Month Rule and Why There's No STT Discount — Sell shares in a private company, an ESOP grant, or a pre-IPO stake, and the tax rules look deceptively similar to listed-market trading — until the holding period and the missing STT discount change the actual bill. Here's exactly how unlisted shares are taxed differently on both sides of the long-term line.
Joint Property Ownership 2026: How Capital Gains Are Split Between Co-Owners When You Sell — Two co-owners selling a jointly held property often assume the capital gain splits however feels fair at tax time. It doesn't — the split follows the ownership percentage stated in the original deed, and getting that wrong creates a TDS mismatch for the buyer and a clubbing risk for any co-owner who never actually funded their share.- REIT & InvIT Taxation in India 2026: Why the Same Payout Can Be Exempt, Taxable, and Deferred All at Once — A REIT or InvIT distribution lands in your account as a single number, but the Income Tax Act sees up to four different things bundled inside it — interest, dividend, rental income, and a repayment-of-capital component — and taxes each one on its own terms. A 2026 amendment bill would simplify one piece of this. It isn't law yet.
Section 54EC Bonds 2026: How to Save Capital Gains Tax on Property Without Buying Another House — If you've sold land or a building and don't plan to buy another home, Section 54EC bonds from REC, PFC, IRFC and HUDCO are the one remaining way to wipe out the long-term capital gains tax. The price is a five-year lock-in at 5.25% — and whether that's a good deal depends on your slab.