A tax plan

Eight chapters without a single rate. This one says why that was the right way to write them, and what to do.

Five habits that outlast the law

1. Classify before you buy. Chapter 2 and chapter 3. Not the rate — the head. It tells you whether holding longer helps, whether the return is taxed as it arises or on realisation, and whether you control the timing. Two instruments with the same headline return and different heads are different investments.

2. Locate deliberately. Chapter 7. If you hold both taxable and tax-advantaged accounts, which assets sit where changes your after-tax return without changing your allocation or your risk. Interest-bearing holdings suffer most in a taxable account. This is free and almost nobody does it.

3. Defer where you can. Chapter 4. Nothing is taxed until there is a transfer, so an unrealised gain compounds on the full amount while a taxed return compounds on a reduced one. Churning a portfolio has a tax cost independent of its transaction cost, and the decision to hold is worth something on its own.

4. Document from the start. Chapter 6. Contract notes, allotment advices, capital gains statements, interest certificates, property papers. The absence of acquisition evidence does not reduce a gain — it removes your ability to prove the cost, which increases it. Keep it for as long as you hold, and years beyond.

5. Verify every figure before acting. Chapter 1. Rates, slabs, thresholds, holding periods and exemptions move with each Finance Act, and the Act itself was replaced on 1 April 2026. Anything you read citing the Income-tax Act 1961 is describing a repealed statute, and that includes a great deal of material still in circulation.

None of those five depends on a number. That is deliberate: they were true before the rewrite and they are true after it.

When to get advice, and when

The expensive mistake is not paying for help. It is discovering after a transaction that a provision which would have applied needed something done beforehand — chapter 4's point that most reliefs cannot be applied retrospectively.

Take advice before:

• selling property
• any large or unusual capital gain
• receiving an inheritance or a gift of assets
• exercising employee stock options
• starting a business or going freelance
• acquiring foreign assets or income
• a year with losses you intend to carry forward

A conversation before the transaction is a different conversation from one after it, and only the first kind can change the outcome.

What not to do

Three habits that cost more than they save.

Buying a product for its tax benefit. Chapter 7: a deduction saves your marginal rate on the amount, and a product returning three points less gives that back within a few years and keeps taking. The test is whether you would own it without the benefit.

Letting tax prevent a sensible sale. The mirror error. Holding a position you should exit purely to avoid realising a gain is letting the tax tail wag the dog in the other direction — chapter 7 of the risk subject's concentration point does not stop applying because a gain is sitting in it.

Assuming last year's rules. They have changed, more than once, and the statute itself has been replaced.

The page

Alongside the risk plan of chapter 12 of that subject:

• Each holding: its head, whether taxed as it arises or on realisation, and which account it sits in
• Where the acquisition records live
• Which decisions this year need advice, and before what date
• The real after-tax return on anything slab-rated, from chapter 8

Four lines and a list. It takes an evening and it is the difference between a tax position you manage and one that happens to you.

Why this subject quoted no rates

Said plainly at the end as well as the start.

This site cites primary documents it has actually read, with the date read. For this subject the Department's own pages that carry current rates were not reachable, and the statute changed on 1 April 2026 — so quoting figures would have meant repeating numbers second-hand about a law that had just been rewritten.

The structure is what survives that, and the structure is what lets you ask the right question. For the figures: the Income Tax Department's portal, and a chartered accountant for anything that matters.

That is not a limitation worth apologising for. A tax chapter that is right about mechanism and silent on rates is more useful than one confidently quoting a rate from a repealed Act — and there is a great deal of the second kind about.

The point

Classify before buying, locate assets deliberately, defer where you can, document from the start, and verify every figure before acting — five habits that survived the Act being replaced. Take advice before a large transaction rather than after, because most reliefs cannot be applied retrospectively.