Capital Gains Calculator

Most capital gains calculators answer one small question: I sold this, what do I owe? That is the easy part, and it is not the part that costs people money.

This one does the whole year. Put in everything you have sold, add any losses you are carrying from earlier years, and it works out what you owe, how much of your yearly tax free limit is still sitting unused, and how much more you could book right now without paying anything at all.

The Rule That Decides Everything

Your losses are taken off your gains first. The free limit is applied to whatever is left over.

That order is why the calculator warns you when you book a loss in a year your gains were already small. The loss gets swallowed by a gain that was never going to be taxed, and it does not carry forward, because it was fully absorbed. You have thrown away something worth 12.5% of its value in a future year.

The same rule works the other way. If you are carrying losses from a bad year, small harvesting achieves nothing, because the losses eat the gain before the free limit is reached. Book a bigger gain instead. Tax harvesting works through both of these with numbers.

Five Things Worth Knowing

• The clock is twelve months for listed things, twenty four for the rest. Shares and equity funds turn long term after a year. Property, gold and unlisted shares take two years. Being a few days early can change the rate you pay, so check the dates before you place the order.
• Debt funds do not play this game. For most bought in recent years the gain is added to your income and taxed at your slab rate however long you held them. There is no free limit and no lower long term rate waiting.
• Your oldest units are sold first. You do not choose. The earliest ones you bought go first, and they usually carry the biggest gain. Get the capital gains statement from your broker or fund house rather than working it out from memory.
• Short term losses are the more useful kind. They can be set against either sort of gain. Long term losses can only meet long term gains. This calculator spends each kind where it saves the most tax, which is what you would want, but your filing software decides the final order.
• File on time or lose the loss. A loss carries forward for eight years, but only if you filed your return by the due date. Miss the date and it is gone, which is the most expensive paperwork mistake in personal tax.

If any of the terms here are unfamiliar, capital gains basics for investors covers what is taxed, when, and which units count as sold.

This calculator is for learning. It is not personal tax advice. It uses the rates for tax year 2026-27: 12.5% on long term gains with a free limit of ₹1,25,000 a year on listed shares and equity funds, 20% on short term equity gains, slab rates on debt funds, and a 4% cess on top. It assumes you are a resident individual, ignores surcharge on very high incomes, and does not handle the exemptions available when you put the proceeds of a property sale into another property. Tax rules change with every Budget. Your filing software or a qualified tax professional should do the actual calculation. Please check current rules before acting on any of this.