How to calculate capital gains tax on NEPSE shares.

The two CGT bands

For an individual Nepali investor (this guide does not cover institutional rates):

• Long-term gain (held more than 365 days): taxed at 7.5%.
• Short-term gain (held 365 days or fewer): taxed at 10%.
• Realised loss: no CGT. Losses don't currently offset other share gains.

The boundary is strict: exactly 365 days held is still short-term. To qualify for the long-term 7.5% rate, you need to hold for at least 366 days.

These bands took effect on 17 July 2026, the start of FY 2083/84. A sale settled before that date was taxed at the previous 5% long-term and 7.5% short-term rates, so an older contract note will not match the numbers here. What changed, and when.

The cost basis: not just buy price × quantity

A common mistake is to treat cost basis as "quantity × buy price". In NEPSE that undercounts what you actually paid, because you also paid:

• Broker commission: tiered by trade size, with a floor of NPR 10:

• SEBON fee: 0.015% of the transaction amount, on both buy and sell.
• DP charge: flat NPR 25 per script per transaction, on both buy and sell.

FIFO matters when you bought in lots

If you bought 100 shares of NABIL in 2022 and 50 more in 2024, and you sell 80 today, NEPSE applies FIFO: the 80 sold are treated as 80 from the 2022 lot. That has two implications: (a) the cost basis is the older, often lower price, and (b) those 80 shares are long-term (held more than 365 days) so they qualify for 7.5% CGT rather than 10%.

A worked example

Suppose you bought 100 shares of XYZ at NPR 500 on 1 January 2024 and sell them at NPR 700 on 5 August 2026 (held 947 days, long-term, so the FY 2083/84 long-term band of 7.5% applies).

Buy side:

• Buy amount = 100 × 500 = NPR 50,000
• Commission = 0.36% of 50,000 = NPR 180
• SEBON fee = 0.015% of 50,000 = NPR 7.50
• DP charge = NPR 25
• Total buy cost (cost basis) = NPR 50,212.50

Sell side:

• Sell amount = 100 × 700 = NPR 70,000
• Commission = 0.33% of 70,000 = NPR 231
• SEBON fee = 0.015% of 70,000 = NPR 10.50
• DP charge = NPR 25
• Gross sell proceeds (before CGT) = 70,000 − 231 − 10.50 − 25 = NPR 69,733.50

Capital gain:

• Capital gain = 69,733.50 − 50,212.50 = NPR 19,521
• Holding period > 365 days → long-term → CGT rate = 7.5%
• CGT = 7.5% of 19,521 = NPR 1,464.08

Net receivable to your CM account = 69,733.50 − 1,464.08 = NPR 68,269.42

The mistake spreadsheets make

Most retail spreadsheets compute CGT as "7.5% of (sell price − buy price) × quantity". For the example above that gives 7.5% × (700 − 500) × 100 = NPR 1,500, overstating the tax by NPR 35.92: the spreadsheet missed the fees on both sides and applied CGT to a gross that already included broker commission. On a NPR 50k trade the error is small. Scale the same trade to 10,000 shares and the spreadsheet overstates CGT by NPR 2,568.75, enough to matter.

How Punji handles all of this

When you add a holding to Punji's portfolio, the buy total payable is computed with all three fees and stamped as the immutable cost basis. When you decide to sell, tap the holding and Punji shows the post-tax net receivable, applying the correct 7.5% or 10% band based on the actual holding period in days, FIFO across multiple lots, and broker fees on both sides. You can also use the standalone CGT calculator for a one-off computation without saving a holding. Not legal advice; verify edge cases with a tax advisor.