Your capital gains statement and filing without fear

The capital gains statement is the one document that turns a year of SIPs and redemptions into the few numbers your tax return needs. Most people have never opened one. Once you have, filing with mutual fund income stops being frightening: the registrar has already done the sums, and your job is to copy them into the right boxes. This chapter shows you where to get it and how to read it.

Where the statement comes from

Every fund house uses a registrar, either CAMS or KFintech, to keep its investor records. Both registrars can generate a capital gains statement for any financial year, covering every folio under your PAN with that registrar. Request it on their website or app with your PAN and registered email, choose the financial year, and the PDF arrives by email, usually within minutes. You need one from each registrar if you hold funds serviced by both. Many platforms pull both into a single view, but the registrar document is the official one.

The statement lists only transactions that count as a sale for tax: redemptions, switches out, and SIP instalments that were sold. If you only bought during the year and sold nothing, the statement will be empty and you have no capital gains to report.

How to read it

The statement groups your sales into four sections, and each section lands in a different place on the tax return.

1. Equity, short-term. Units held 12 months or less. Taxed at 20 percent.
2. Equity, long-term. Units held more than 12 months. Taxed at 12.5 percent above the ₹1.25 lakh yearly exemption.
3. Other than equity, short-term. Mostly debt funds bought on or after 1 April 2023. Taxed at slab.
4. Other than equity, long-term. Older debt units and some other categories, under their own rules.

For each sale the statement shows the purchase date, purchase value, sale date, sale value and the resulting gain or loss. SIP units are matched first-in, first-out, so your oldest instalments are treated as sold first. For equity units bought before 1 February 2018, you will see a "grandfathered" cost, which uses the 31 January 2018 price to protect gains made before the tax was introduced.

Note the loss. Capital losses are useful: a short-term loss can be set off against any capital gain in the year, and a long-term loss against long-term gains. Unused losses can be carried forward for up to eight years, but only if you file your return on time. That alone is a reason to file even in a year when you owe nothing.

Filing without fear

With capital gains from mutual funds, you will usually need ITR-2 rather than the simpler ITR-1; check the current year's form rules, which can allow small long-term gains in ITR-1. The capital gains schedule asks for exactly the totals your statement already gives: short-term and long-term, equity and other, with equity long-term gains going into the schedule for Section 112A sales. The income-tax portal also pre-fills some of this from the Annual Information Statement, which receives redemption data from the registrars. Compare the pre-filled figures with your statement. Where they differ, your statement is usually right and the AIS has used the sale value, not the gain.

The return is normally due by 31 July for individuals, unless the deadline is extended. If your total tax after TDS exceeds ₹10,000 in a year, advance tax instalments apply during the year, and large redemptions can push you over that line. Tax at slab on debt funds and tax on IDCW payouts also appear on the same return, under income from other sources where applicable.