If you sold any shares or equity mutual funds this year, ITR-2 wants your gains in Schedule CG — neatly split into short-term and long-term, each with the right cost basis. But every broker exports its realized P&L differently, and doing that split by hand is exactly where taxpayers slip. Here's the FY 2025-26 rulebook in plain language, and how Taficon does the maths for you.

The problem: every broker P&L looks different

Zerodha, Groww, ICICI Direct, Upstox, Angel One — each hands you a “realized P&L” report, and no two use the same columns, the same date format, or the same way of labelling short-term versus long-term. Some already split the two; some don't. Some give you the grandfathered cost, some give you only the actual buy price.

Schedule CG, on the other hand, is unforgiving. It needs each gain bucketed correctly, with the correct cost of acquisition, so the tax at each rate comes out right. Copy the wrong figure into the wrong row and you either overpay or invite a notice. The four things that must be right, every time:

Is each trade short-term or long-term?
What's the correct cost of acquisition (with grandfathering)?
Which gains qualify for the ₹1.25 lakh exemption, and which don't?
What's the tax at each rate once it's all added up?

Short-term vs long-term: the 12-month rule

For listed equity shares and equity-oriented mutual funds, the line is a holding period of 12 months:

Held more than 12 months → long-term (LTCG).
Held 12 months or less → short-term (STCG).

It's a calendar-anniversary test, not a “365 days” shortcut — buy on 10 June 2024 and the long-term clock crosses over the day after 10 June 2025. Leap years matter, and a naive day-count can push a trade into the wrong bucket by one day, changing the rate that applies.

The rates for FY 2025-26

The Finance Act changes that took effect on 23 July 2024 carry through FY 2025-26 (AY 2026-27). For listed equity:

STCG on listed equity (Section 111A): 20% — raised from 15% with effect from 23 July 2024.
LTCG on listed equity (Section 112A): 12.5% — raised from 10% — on gains above the annual exemption (below).

These are flat rates on the gains themselves — they don't depend on your slab. That's why capital-gains tax sits on top of the slab tax on your salary or business income, not inside it.

The ₹1.25 lakh exemption — equity only

Under Section 112A, the first ₹1,25,000 of long-term equity gains each year is exempt (raised from ₹1,00,000). Only the LTCG above ₹1.25 lakh is taxed, at 12.5%.

Here's the nuance that trips people up: this ₹1.25 lakh exemption applies only to listed-equity (112A) LTCG. Long-term gains on debt mutual funds, property, and gold are taxed under different sections and get noshare of this exemption. So a correct calculation has to keep equity and non-equity gains in separate boxes — lump them together and you'll wrongly shelter non-equity gains, or miscount the equity exemption. Taficon keeps them apart by design.

Grandfathering: pre-Feb-2018 holdings

LTCG on equity only became taxable from 1 April 2018. To protect gains that had already accrued, the law grandfathers shares and units bought before 1 February 2018. For those, the cost of acquisition is stepped up using this rule:

Grandfathered cost of acquisition

Cost = higher of:

the actual purchase cost, and
the lower of (a) the fair market value on 31 January 2018 and (b) the actual sale price.

In effect, the gain that built up until 31 January 2018 is shielded, and only the appreciation after that date is taxable. The catch: you need the 31-Jan-2018 fair market value(the highest quoted price that day) for each holding. If your broker P&L doesn't carry it, the grandfathered cost can't be computed correctly — so Taficon flags any pre-Feb-2018 lot that's missing its 31-Jan-2018 FMV instead of quietly guessing.

How Taficon reads your P&L and does the maths

Upload your broker's realized-P&L export and Taficon does the repetitive, error-prone part for you:

Normalizes the columns. Whatever your broker calls them, the buy date, sell date, quantity, cost, and proceeds get mapped to a common shape.
Classifies each trade. Every lot is tagged STCG or LTCG using the 12-month calendar-anniversary rule — leap-year safe, so no one-day misfires.
Applies grandfathering. Pre-Feb-2018 lots get the stepped-up cost using the higher-of / lower-of rule, and anything missing its 31-Jan-2018 FMV is flagged, not fudged.
Totals it for Schedule CG. You get your STCG total, your LTCG total, and the taxable LTCG after the ₹1.25 lakh exemption — ready to drop into the return.

It's deterministic: re-run the same P&L and you get the same numbers, every time. No AI guessing your cost basis — just the rules, applied consistently.

From gains to your full pre-flight

The point isn't just a tidy STCG/LTCG split — it's knowing your real total tax. Those capital-gains figures flow straight into ITR Pre-Flight and the ITR Draft, where Taficon folds the 111A and 112A tax on top of your slab tax. You see one number: what you actually owe, salary and gains combined — before you file, not after.

Your data stays yours

The whole thing runs in your browser. Your broker P&L file never leaves your machine — no upload to a server, nothing stored.

What that buys you at filing time:

The right gain in the right Schedule CG row, at the right rate.
The ₹1.25 lakh exemption applied only where it's allowed.
Grandfathered lots handled correctly — or clearly flagged.

Compute your capital gains

The fastest way to trust the numbers is to run your own P&L through it. Upload the export, let Taficon classify and reconcile, and see your Schedule CG-ready totals — then carry them into your full pre-flight.

Capital Gains from Your Broker P&L: STCG, LTCG & Grandfathering Explained