Long Term Capital Gains Exemption

Indian income tax law exempts long-term capital gains arising from transfer of listed equity shares provided such transfer takes place through the stock exchange, and securities transaction tax (STT) is paid. However, the Government believes that this exemption is being misused by certain unscrupulous elements to convert unaccounted money into legal money. The law was therefore recently amended to remedy the situation, restricting this benefit only to such cases where STT is paid both at the time of purchase as well as sale.

However, since this amendment is being introduced as an anti-abuse provision, it also provided that the Government would notify certain types of acquisitions where this restrictive provision would not apply so that genuine business transactions are not impacted.

A draft notification has recently been issued by the Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) attempting to list out such instances and inviting comments from stakeholders. Through this blogpost, we will discuss the efficacy and appropriateness of this draft notification.

Draft CBDT Notification

As discussed above, the recent amendment provides that the capital gains exemption shall be available only in such cases where STT is paid both at the time of purchase as well as at the sale of such listed shares, unless the shares were acquired through a mechanism which has specifically been notified to be unaffected by this provision. In other words, the import of this provision is very wide and could deny capital gains exemption to all such instances unless the notification exempts them. To protect genuine business transactions, the Government has been empowered to come up with instances where the exemption will not be denied. Hence, the nature of transactions to be specified by the notification shall be very important to determine the taxability of capital gains.Continue Reading Draft CBDT Notification on Withdrawal of Capital Gains Exemption – Clearing the Maze or Further Compounding it