STCG Calculator
Quick trades pay quick taxes. When listed shares are sold inside twelve months, the entire profit is charged at twenty percent under Section 111A — no exemption slab softens it. This STCG calculator takes your buy cost, sale value, and selling expenses, then lays out the gain, the tax before cess, the four percent health-and-education levy, and the final rupee figure you should set aside.
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How to use this calculator
- Add up everything you paid to acquire the shares, including purchase brokerage.
- Enter the gross amount received when you sold them.
- Deduct nothing mentally — sale-side expenses get their own field.
- Watch the three-line breakdown appear: gain, tax at the section rate, then cess.
- Use the number to decide whether waiting for the twelve-month line changes your net outcome.
The formula behind it
Short-term capital gain equals net sale consideration minus acquisition cost, where net consideration means sale price reduced by expenses incurred purely to transfer the shares — brokerage being the usual suspect. That whole gain is then taxed at a flat twenty percent for STT-paid listed equity transfers from 23 July 2024 onward, and four percent of the resulting tax is added as health and education cess. There is no annual exemption on this side and no indexation anywhere; losses, meanwhile, attract zero tax here though they remain valuable set-off entries in your return.
Worked example
A trader in Jaipur bought ₹1,80,000 of a midcap ahead of quarterly results, sold the entire position eleven weeks later for ₹2,16,000 when momentum faded, and paid ₹1,200 in delivery brokerage across both legs.
| Buy cost | ₹1,80,000 |
|---|---|
| Sale value | ₹2,16,000 |
| Sale-side expenses | ₹1,200 |
Step by step
- Net gain = ₹2,16,000 − ₹1,200 − ₹1,80,000 = ₹34,800
- Tax at 20% = ₹6,960
- Cess at 4% of ₹6,960 = ₹278.40
- Total = ₹6,960 + ₹278.40
Estimated outgo ≈ ₹7,238.40 — an effective 20.8% bite on the trading profit, which is why holding past twelve months (12.5% after exemption) is often the cheaper strategy when the thesis still stands.
Frequently asked questions
Does the ₹1.25 lakh exemption apply to short-term gains too?
No. The annual exemption lives only in Section 112A for long-term equity gains. Short-term profits are charged on every rupee from the first, which is exactly why this calculator has no exemption row.
What about shares sold on the same day (intraday)?
Intraday equity profits are speculative business income, taxed at slab rates, not under Section 111A. This page covers delivery-based sales where you actually took demat delivery and paid STT.
I made losses on one stock and gains on another. What now?
Within short-term, losses offset gains freely; left over, they can carry forward eight assessment years against future gains. This tool prices each position standalone — netting happens in your return.
Is advance tax relevant to these gains?
Yes, materially. Significant realised gains inside a quarter can trigger advance-tax instalments rather than a single March payment; frequent traders usually settle this through quarterly estimates.
Why the short-term rate bites harder than it reads
Twenty percent sounds gentler than slab rates until you remember what it excludes: there is no ₹1,25,000 shelter, no adjustment for inflation, and cess stacks immediately. For someone in the new-regime thirty-percent bracket the headline saving versus ordinary rates is real but modest; for lower-income investors the opposite holds — short-term gains can push total income into slabs they would never otherwise have touched, since special-rate income still counts toward threshold crossings for surcharge purposes.
The behavioural trap matters just as much. Fast-flipping traders meet this calculator most often while reconciling a season's damage, discovering that a string of small wins evaporated once the uniform rate applied to each. Running the tool before opening a position converts 'I'll make ₹40,000 quickly' into 'I keep ₹31,680 after tax', which is the number decisions deserve to be made on.
Frequency compounds the effect. A dozen quick round-trips each surrendering a fifth of profits end the season far behind a handful of patient positions that paid half that rate on bigger gains — before even counting brokerage churn. Traders who genuinely earn their keep through velocity exist, but they budget taxes as a business cost with quarterly advance-tax instalments, not as an afterthought discovered while filing in July.
Holding one extra month: the quiet arbitrage
Because the long-term side begins with a tax-free ₹1,25,000 each financial year and charges half the rate beyond it, borderline positions reward patience arithmetically. A gain of two lakh taxed today surrenders about ₹41,600 with cess; the identical gain realised thirteen months in costs roughly ₹9,375 — and sometimes nothing at all if that year's exemption is unused. Few portfolio actions offer a return comparable to simply adjusting the calendar.
Patience must survive contact with the thesis, though. If the original reason for buying has broken, paying the short-term rate to exit is not a failure — it is the cost of changing your mind early. The number on this page is a toll gate, not a fence: it prices the exit so fear of tax never traps capital in a deteriorating story.
Related calculators
- LTCG CalculatorSee how the ₹1.25 lakh exemption absorbs long-term gains before 12.5% applies.
- Capital Gains CalculatorClassify any share sale as STCG or LTCG and estimate tax with cess, sources dated.
- CAGR CalculatorCompress any start value, end value, and duration into one honest annualised growth rate.
Data sources & verification dates
- Income Tax Dept — Section 111A (20% for transfers on/after 23-07-2024) — verified as of 2026-08-26
- Income Tax Dept — Tax on short-term capital gains (cess in official examples) — verified as of 2026-08-26
stockcalculator.in Research Desk — Editorial team; verifies every figure against official sources before publishing
Reviewed by stockcalculator.in Research Desk — Internal cross-check against Income Tax Department statute summaries
Last updated . Figures are re-verified against official sources on every revision — see our methodology.
Disclaimer
Tax rules referenced by this tool change through the Finance Act cycle, and holding-period or exemption thresholds may differ by asset class and transaction date. Figures shown are estimates for education and planning only. We are not SEBI-registered investment advisers and nothing on this site is investment advice. For filing decisions, confirm current slabs, cess, and surcharge against the Income Tax Department's own guidance or a chartered accountant.