What is a Tax P&L report?

A Tax P&L report is a document that translates your trading and investment activity into the categories and figures required for tax filing. It calculates your capital gains (short term and long term), your intraday and F&O income under PGBP, and your dividend income — all in one place. A broker statement tells you what trades happened; a Tax P&L report tells you what those trades mean for your tax return.

Is the Tax P&L report the same as my broker's P&L statement?

No. Your broker's P&L statement shows your trading profit and loss based on market prices. The Tax P&L report applies tax rules on top of that — FIFO matching, holding period classification, grandfathering for pre-2018 purchases, expense deductions, and loss set-off rules.

Which ITR form do I need if I have capital gains from equity?

You cannot use ITR-1 if you have capital gains. Most investors and traders with equity capital gains, intraday income, or F&O income will need to file ITR-2 or ITR-3. The right form depends on your income sources.

What is the difference between short-term and long-term capital gains on shares?

For listed equity shares and equity mutual funds, gains on holdings sold after more than 12 months are long term, taxed at 12.5% on gains above ₹1.25 lakh. Gains on holdings sold within 12 months are short term, taxed at 20%. For other assets like physical gold and real estate, the long-term threshold is 24 months. The report classifies every transaction automatically based on the buy date and sell date.

Why is my cost of acquisition in the report higher than what I actually paid?

If you bought listed equity shares or equity mutual funds before 31 January 2018, a rule called grandfathering applies. The cost of acquisition is stepped up to the fair market value as on 31 January 2018 if that value is higher than your actual purchase price — subject to a cap at the sale price. This reduces your taxable gain on pre-2018 holdings. The FMV column in the Delivery Settlements sheet shows when this has been applied.

Can I set off my F&O loss against salary income?

No. F&O losses can be set off against most business income and capital gains, but not against salary income. Intraday (speculative) losses can only be set off against speculative income. Any losses that cannot be offset in the current year are carried forward — up to four years for speculative losses, and up to eight years for non-speculative F&O losses. The Current Year Loss Adjustment Summary on the Summary sheet shows exactly how the set-off has been applied.

What is tax turnover for intraday and F&O, and why does it matter?

Tax turnover is not your trading volume. For intraday and F&O, it is calculated as the sum of the absolute profit or loss on each trade, regardless of sign. It matters because once your tax turnover crosses certain thresholds, you are required to get your accounts audited before filing. The PGBP Summary and the individual settlement sheets show your tax turnover figure.

Why does a stock I sold appear in both the short-term and long-term columns?

This happens when you bought the same stock across multiple lots at different times. When you sell, the report applies FIFO — the oldest units are treated as sold first. If some lots crossed the 12-month threshold and others did not, the same sale produces both a long-term and a short-term gain or loss. The Delivery Settlements sheet shows each matched lot separately with its own classification.

What happens to dividends in the report?

Dividends are not capital gains. They are Income from other sources, taxed at your slab rate. The Dividends sheet logs every dividend received during the year, and the total flows into the Summary sheet. The amounts shown are gross figures before TDS. If TDS was deducted on your dividends, that needs to be accounted for separately when you file.

Can I carry forward losses if I do not file my ITR by the due date?

Losses (other than losses under house property) can only be carried forward if you file your ITR on or before the due date. If you miss the deadline, you lose the right to carry those losses into future years. This is one of the more consequential filing deadlines for active traders. A Quicko tax expert can help you confirm your specific situation before the due date.

What is Tax P&L report?

Your broker gives you a contract note for every trade. Your mutual fund platform gives you a statement for every redemption. But none of those documents tells you what it means for your taxes. They tell you what happened; they do not tell you how the tax department sees it.

The Tax P&L report translates those transactions into tax language. It calculates your capital gains, separates short-term from long-term, identifies which gains come from equity and which from other assets, pulls out your intraday and F&O income as business income, and adds up your dividend income. It presents all of this in a single Excel file so that you have everything in one place when it is time to file ITR.

Taxable Income Summary Sheet

The Summary sheet is the right place to start when you open the Tax P&L report. Every other sheet in the report feeds into this one. Rather than listing individual trades, it pulls everything together into a single view: what you earned, what you lost, and how it all maps to your tax obligations for the year.

Indian tax law treats different types of trading and investment activity as separate categories, each with its own rules and tax rate.

Particular	Taxable Income	Carry Forward Loss
Long Term Capital Gains	₹1,30,69,000
Short Term Capital Gains	₹0
Speculative B&P from Intraday		₹8,000
Non-speculative B&P from F&O	₹22,000
Income from other sources	₹6,500

The Taxable Income Summary table shows five of these categories:

Long Term Capital Gains:profit from assets you held for a qualifying long-term period before selling.
Short Term Capital Gains: profit from assets sold before the long-term threshold.
Speculative B&P from Intraday: profit or loss from intraday equity trades, treated as business income.
Non-speculative B&P from F&O: profit or loss from futures and options, also treated as business income.
Income from other sources: primarily dividends.

For each category, the table shows two columns: Taxable Income (what you owe tax on this year) and Carry Forward Loss (losses that could not be fully offset this year).

What counts as long term vs short term, what makes intraday and F&O business income, and how carry-forward losses work are all explained in more detail alongside the Delivery Settlements, Schedule 198, Intraday Settlements, and F&O sheets later on this page. The Taxable Income Summary gives you the final position across all five categories in one place.

Capital Gains from Securities

When you sell securities like shares, mutual fund units, or bonds, the report captures every transaction and works out your taxable gain or loss automatically. This section covers three sheets: the Scripwise Delivery Summary sheet, the Delivery Settlements sheet, and the Schedule 112A sheet.

The most important factor in calculating your capital gains tax is how long you held the asset before selling. The holding period threshold and the applicable tax rates vary by asset type. The report uses these rules automatically to classify every transaction.

Asset	Long-term (held)	LTCG rate	STCG rate
Listed equity shares	> 12 months	12.5% above ₹1.25 lakh	20%
Equity mutual funds / ETFs	> 12 months	12.5% above ₹1.25 lakh	20%
Debt mutual funds (bought on/after 1 Apr 2023)	—	It is deemed to be short term gain, even if you held them for long term.	Slab rate
Debt mutual funds (bought before 1 Apr 2023)	> 24 months	12.5%	Slab rate
Physical gold	> 24 months	12.5%	Slab rate
Gold ETFs (listed)	> 12 months	12.5%	Slab rate
Real estate	> 24 months	12.5%*	Slab rate
Unlisted shares	> 24 months	12.5%	Slab rate

*For real estate, the rate and indexation treatment depend on when the property was purchased. This is covered alongside the Real Estate sheet later on this page. The tax rates above apply to gains made on or after 23 July 2024. Gains made before that date in the same financial year may have been taxed at the earlier rates.

Capital Gains from Real Estate and Other Assets

The Real Estate sheet and the Other Assets sheet follow the same structure. Both cover capital gains from assets outside the securities world.

When you sell an asset you have held for several years, part of your apparent gain is simply the effect of inflation: the rupee you paid in 2005 was worth more than the rupee you received in 2026. Indexation adjusts your original purchase price upward using the Cost Inflation Index (CII), a number the government notifies every year. A higher indexed cost means a smaller taxable gain.

Before 23 July, 2024, long-term gains on property were taxed at 20% with indexation. From 23 July 2024 onwards, the default rate became 12.5% without indexation. For real estate, the rules now depend on when the property was purchased:

Purchased	Rate	Indexation
Before 23 July 2024	Lower of 12.5% without indexation or 20% with indexation	Available, report picks whichever gives lower tax
On or after 23 July 2024	12.5% only	Not available

Real estate sheet show two versions of your cost of acquisition: Cost of acquisition with indexation and Cost of acquisition without indexation. It also show two versions of Cost of improvement. Whether the indexed figure is actually used in the gain calculation depends on the asset type and purchase date.

The Applicable tax rate column in the Real Estate sheet tells you which treatment the report has applied to each row. For other asset types like gold, the indexation option no longer applies regardless of purchase date.

Dividends

Dividends are not capital gains. Under Indian tax law they are Income from other sources, taxed at your slab rate, and they have no cost basis, no holding period, and no gain calculation. The Dividends sheet is a straightforward log of every dividend received during the year.

Security name	ISIN	Quantity	Date	Dividend Per Share / MF / ETF	Dividend amount
Infosys Ltd	INE009A01021	50	20-May-2026	₹22	₹1,100
HDFC Bank	INE040A01034	200	05-Jun-2026	₹27	₹5,400
Total					₹6,500

The total of ₹6,500 flows into the Income from other sources row of the Current Year Loss Adjustment on the Summary sheet. One row appears per dividend event. A security that paid two interim dividends during the year would show two rows here.

The Dividend amount is the gross figure before TDS. If the company deducted TDS before crediting the dividend to your account, that amount does not appear in this sheet and needs to be accounted for separately when you file.

Intraday Trading

When you buy and sell the same stock on the same day, no shares are delivered to your demat account. Tax law treats the resulting profit or loss as speculative business income under PGBP, taxed at your slab rate.

One row per security. All intraday trades in that stock across the full year are consolidated into a single line.

Security name	ISIN	Sell Value	Buy Value	Total transfer expenses	Taxable P&L	Turnover from Intraday Trading
Reliance Industries	INE002A01018	₹5,84,000	₹5,80,000	₹2,050	₹1,950	₹7,550
HDFC Bank	INE040A01034	₹3,56,000	₹3,61,500	₹2,150	-₹7,650	₹7,650
Total		₹9,40,000	₹9,41,500	₹4,200	-₹5,700	₹15,200

Turnover from Intraday Trading is not your trading volume. It is the sum of the absolute value of each trade's Taxable P&L, used to determine whether your activity crosses the threshold that requires a tax audit. Reliance had two trades across the year: one profitable and one at a loss. Both contribute to turnover regardless of sign, which is why the Reliance turnover of ₹7,550 is larger than its net Taxable P&L of ₹1,950. HDFC Bank lost -₹7,650, so its turnover is ₹7,650 with the sign removed.

Futures and Options

F&O trades are treated as non-speculative business income under PGBP, taxed at your slab rate. Unlike intraday, F&O losses can be set off against other business income, but not against capital gains. For a full explanation, see How are profits from intraday and F&O trading taxed?

This section covers two sheets: the F&O sheet and the Open Positions sheet.

One row per closed contract. Only trades fully squared off during the year appear here. Open positions at 31 March are in the Open Positions sheet.

Contract name	Contract Type	Underlying Asset	Qty	Sell date	Sell price	Sale Value	Buy date	Buy price	Buy Value	Total transfer expenses	Taxable P&L	Tax Turnover
NIFTY50 25SEP2026 FUT	Future	NIFTY 50	500	25-Sep-2026	₹3,640	₹18,20,000	18-Sep-2026	₹3,575	₹17,87,500	₹5,000	₹27,500	₹27,500
BANKNIFTY 52000CE 30OCT2026	Option	BANK NIFTY	100	30-Oct-2026	₹300	₹30,000	30-Oct-2026	₹305	₹30,500	₹500	-₹1,000	₹1,000
Total						₹18,50,000			₹18,18,000	₹5,500	₹26,500	₹28,500

Tax Turnover here follows the same absolute P&L rule as intraday. The Nifty Future made a profit of ₹27,500, so turnover is ₹27,500. The BankNifty Option lost -₹1,000, so turnover is ₹1,000. For options, you may have read that the premium received should be counted separately in turnover. That applies when the premium is not already included in the P&L calculation. The total Tax Turnover of ₹28,500 ties to the PGBP Summary table on the Summary sheet.

Other Charges

Not every expense you incur as a trader is captured in the individual settlement sheets. Charges like your annual account maintenance fee or a call trade charge have no connection to a specific buy or sell transaction. The Other Charges sheet is where these sit.

The sheet has two sections: Direct Expenses and Indirect Expenses. Both are broken down across Delivery, Intraday, and F&O.

Direct expenses are charges tied to your trading activity but not linked to a specific trade. DP Charges, for example, apply when shares are debited from your demat account on delivery trades.

Particular	Delivery	Intraday	F&O	Total
Auto square-off Charges	₹0	₹0	₹0	₹0
Buy Back Application Charges	₹0	₹0	₹0	₹0
Call Trade Charges	₹0	₹200	₹0	₹200
DP Charges	₹150	₹0	₹0	₹150
Total	₹150	₹200	₹0	₹350

DP Charges appear only under Delivery because they arise from the demat debit on settlement. Call Trade Charges appear under Intraday here for the two trades placed over the phone rather than through the platform.

Tax filing intimidates most people not because the rules are impossible to understand, but because no one ever explained what the numbers actually mean. That is what this report does, and what this page tried to do alongside it.

This report is free, built by Quicko. If you want the next step handled too, like tax planning to save money, advance tax calculation, tax payment, and ITR filing with all these rules applied automatically, sign up on Quicko and explore its paid plans.