Intraday Trading Tax Calculator —
Speculative Income, AY 2026-27

Yes. Intraday equity trading — buying and selling the same scrip on the same day without taking delivery — is speculative business income under the main limb of Section 43(5) of the Income Tax Act, because the contract is settled otherwise than by actual delivery. This is not a choice or a classification you elect; it follows from how the trade settles. It matters because speculative income sits in its own silo for loss purposes, and because it must be reported separately from your other business income in ITR-3.

At your normal slab rates, as business income — there is no special rate. Intraday profit is added to your total income and taxed under whichever regime you are in (the new regime under Section 115BAC is the default for AY 2026-27), plus 4% health and education cess. It is a common and expensive mistake to assume the 20% short-term capital gains rate applies: Section 111A covers DELIVERY-based equity sold within 12 months, not intraday. Because intraday is business income you can deduct genuine trading expenses — brokerage, STT, exchange and SEBI charges, GST on brokerage, internet, advisory fees and a reasonable share of depreciation.

No. Section 73(1) restricts a speculative loss to being set off only against the profits of another speculative business. It cannot be set off against salary, house-property income, interest, capital gains, or even against your F&O profits — F&O is non-speculative under the proviso to Section 43(5)(d), which puts it in a different silo. This is the single most consequential difference between intraday and F&O, and it is why a trader who does both must keep the two P&Ls separate rather than reporting one net trading figure.

Four assessment years, under Section 73(2), and only against future speculative income. That is half the eight years an F&O (non-speculative) loss gets under Section 72. Carry-forward is also conditional on filing your return by the due date under Section 139(1) — for AY 2026-27 that is 31 August 2026 for non-audit ITR-3 filers, or 31 October 2026 where a Section 44AB audit applies. File late and the loss is simply lost; a belated return under Section 139(4) preserves nothing on this front.

The absolute sum of your favourable and unfavourable differences — every trade's profit and every trade's loss added together as positive numbers, without netting. If you made ₹6 lakh on winning trades and lost ₹4 lakh on losing ones, turnover is ₹10 lakh, not the ₹2 lakh net. This follows the ICAI Guidance Note on Tax Audit and is the same basis used for F&O. Because intraday settles electronically, cash receipts and payments are under 5%, so the higher ₹10 crore Section 44AB threshold applies rather than ₹1 crore. Separately, books of account become compulsory under Section 44AA once turnover exceeds ₹25 lakh.

ITR-3. Speculative business income has a dedicated schedule and there is nowhere to report it in ITR-1 or ITR-2; filing those risks a defective-return notice under Section 139(9). ITR-4 (Sugam) is only for presumptive taxation under Section 44AD, and speculative business is expressly excluded from 44AD — so an intraday trader cannot use the presumptive route for the intraday leg, even though an F&O trader can for theirs. If you trade both intraday and F&O, ITR-3 carries both, reported in separate schedules.