GST on trading charges

Goods and services tax (GST) of 18 per cent applies to the service charges on a securities trade in India: brokerage, exchange transaction charges, the SEBI turnover fee , the IPFT levy, depository participant charges and the call-and-trade fee. It does not apply to the securities transaction tax , the commodities transaction tax, or stamp duty , because those are statutory taxes rather than consideration for a service. This article is the trading-charges-wide treatment: it covers every charge line on a contract note, including the SEBI fee, and is the canonical answer to whether GST applies to SEBI charges. The narrower question of GST on brokerage and exchange charges alone is covered in GST on broking charges ; the two pages share the 18 per cent rate and differ only in scope.

GST sits on the trade as the last of the service-side levies. On an intraday or futures and options order where brokerage is Rs 20, GST on the brokerage alone is Rs 3.60, and the exchange charge and SEBI fee carry their own GST on top. On a delivery trade where brokerage is zero, GST is charged only on the exchange transaction charge and the SEBI turnover fee, which is why the GST line on a delivery contract note is a few paise rather than rupees. The rate is identical across segments; what changes is the base it sits on.

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The 18 per cent rate and its statutory basis

GST on stock-broking services is levied at 18 per cent under the Central Goods and Services Tax Act 2017 and the corresponding state Acts, against the service accounting code (SAC) 997152 for stock-broking and related services. The rate has applied since GST replaced the earlier indirect-tax regime on 1 July 2017, when broking moved from service tax of 15 per cent to GST of 18 per cent. Section 9 of the CGST Act is the charging section; the Integrated GST Act 2017 Section 5 charges the inter-state equivalent.

The 18 per cent is not a single levy. Within a state it splits into central GST (CGST) of 9 per cent and state GST (SGST) of 9 per cent, collected together but apportioned between the centre and the state. Across states it is charged as integrated GST (IGST) of 18 per cent. The split is invisible to the trader’s wallet: the total is 18 per cent in both cases, and the only difference is how the revenue is divided.

CGST plus SGST versus IGST: the place-of-supply rule

Whether a trade attracts CGST and SGST or IGST turns on the place of supply, which for stock-broking is the location of the recipient of the service, the client. If the client’s state and the broker’s state of registration are the same, the supply is intra-state and the broker charges CGST and SGST at 9 per cent each. If they differ, the supply is inter-state and the broker charges IGST at 18 per cent. A client in Maharashtra trading through a broker registered in Maharashtra sees CGST and SGST; a client in Karnataka trading through the same Maharashtra-registered broker sees IGST.

This is why two clients paying the identical brokerage can see different tax line items on their contract notes while paying the same total. The place-of-supply rule under the IGST Act decides the label, not the amount. For the trader the practical effect is nil: the all-in service-tax burden is 18 per cent of the taxable charges regardless of which heads it is booked under.

What attracts GST

Brokerage

Brokerage is the broker’s own service fee and is the core taxable supply. On an intraday or F&O order at Rs 20 flat, the GST is Rs 3.60. On a delivery trade where brokerage is zero, there is no brokerage to tax, so the brokerage component of GST is also zero. Brokerage is the line most traders think of when they think of GST on trading, but it is only one of several taxable charges.

Exchange transaction charges

Exchange transaction charges , levied by the NSE, BSE, or MCX on the turnover of the trade, attract 18 per cent GST even though the exchange, not the broker, sets them. Under GST the exchange’s service is treated as a supply received by the broker, who then recovers it from the client, so the charge carries GST when it reaches the client. On the contract note this GST is folded into the single consolidated GST line.

SEBI turnover fee

The SEBI turnover fee attracts 18 per cent GST. This is the line most often misunderstood, because the fee carries the name of the regulator and is sometimes assumed to be a tax outside the GST net. It is not. The SEBI turnover fee is a regulatory service charge, levied at Rs 10 per crore of turnover (zerodha.com/charges, as of 20 June 2026), and a service charge is consideration for a supply, so GST applies. The fee funds SEBI’s regulatory function but is recovered from the client as a charge, and the charge is taxable. On a Rs 1 crore turnover the SEBI fee is Rs 10, and the GST on it is Rs 1.80.

IPFT levy

The investor protection fund trust (IPFT) levy on NSE equity trades attracts GST in the same way as the exchange transaction charge, as a service-side charge recovered from the client. It is a small per-turnover levy, and its GST is again rolled into the consolidated GST figure on the contract note.

DP charges and the call-and-trade fee

Depository participant charges on a delivery sell carry 18 per cent GST: the Rs 13 combined fee (Rs 3.5 CDSL plus Rs 9.5 broker) attracts Rs 2.34 GST for a total of Rs 15.34 per scrip per day (zerodha.com/charges, 20 June 2026). The call-and-trade fee of Rs 50 per executed order is a dealer service charge and carries Rs 9 GST, taking it to Rs 59 per order. Both are service charges and therefore taxable, even though they sit outside the brokerage line.

What does not attract GST

Securities transaction tax and commodities transaction tax

Securities transaction tax (STT) and commodities transaction tax (CTT) are statutory taxes levied under the Finance Act on the value of the trade. A tax is not consideration for a supply of services, so it falls outside the scope of GST. GST is never charged on STT or CTT. The STT on an equity delivery buy and sell, or the CTT on a commodity futures sell, appears on the contract note as its own untaxed line.

Stamp duty

Stamp duty is a duty levied by the states under the Indian Stamp Act on the instrument of transfer, collected at uniform rates since the July 2020 central-collection regime. It is a duty, not a service charge, so GST does not apply to it. Like STT, it sits on the contract note as a standalone untaxed levy.

GST itself

GST is never levied on GST. The taxable base is the sum of the service charges, and once GST is computed on that base it is not itself taxed again. This sounds obvious, but it matters when reconciling a contract note: the GST figure is 18 per cent of the service-charge subtotal, not 18 per cent of the grand total including STT and stamp duty.

Worked example: where GST lands on a contract note

Take a Rs 2,00,000 intraday equity buy on the NSE, with brokerage at the Rs 20 cap. The service-side charges that attract GST are the brokerage, the exchange transaction charge, the SEBI turnover fee, and the IPFT levy. STT and stamp duty sit outside.

The GST of Rs 4.74 is 18 per cent of the Rs 26.34 service-charge base, not of the trade value and not of the grand total. On a Rs 1,00,000 delivery trade the same arithmetic gives a much smaller figure: brokerage is zero, the NSE exchange charge is about Rs 2.97 and the SEBI fee is Rs 0.10, so the GST base is around Rs 3.07 and the GST is about Rs 0.55. The structure is identical; only the base differs.

Input tax credit for traders

Most individual investors cannot recover the GST they pay on brokerage and trading charges. Trading in securities is treated as an exempt supply under GST, because the securities themselves are not a “service” and only the broker’s service is taxable. A person whose output, the sale of securities, is exempt cannot claim input tax credit on the GST paid on the inputs to that activity, so the GST on brokerage is a sunk cost for a typical investor.

Registered businesses are a different matter. A proprietary trading firm or a corporate treasury that is GST-registered and conducts trading as part of a wider taxable business should take specialist advice, because input tax credit eligibility turns on the mix of taxable and exempt output supplies and how the input GST is apportioned. The general rule for the retail investor is the one that matters most: the 18 per cent is paid and not reclaimed.

See also

• GST on broking charges
• SEBI turnover fee
• Exchange transaction charges
• STT and CTT on Zerodha
• Stamp duty by segment
• IPFT levy on stockbroker trades
• DP charges on Zerodha sell transactions
• Call and trade charges at Zerodha
• Zerodha brokerage structure
• Equity delivery brokerage
• Equity intraday brokerage
• F&O futures brokerage
• Futures and Options
• Zerodha charges overview
• Zerodha hidden charges
• AMC at Zerodha
• DDPI one-time charge
• Pledge and unpledge charges
• Contract note
• Brokerage calculator
• Free cash meaning on Zerodha
• Zerodha
• SEBI Investment Management Department
• Central Depository Services (CDSL)
• National Stock Exchange
• Multi Commodity Exchange (MCX)

External references

• Zerodha charges
• CBIC: GST rate finder and notifications
• SEBI
• GST Council
• National Stock Exchange of India
• BSE India

References

1. Central Goods and Services Tax Act 2017, Section 9.
2. Integrated Goods and Services Tax Act 2017, Section 5 (place of supply, inter-state services).
3. GST Rate Schedule for Services, Notification No. 11/2017-CT (Rate), as amended.
4. Service Accounting Code 997152, stock-broking and related services.
5. SEBI (Stock Brokers) Regulations 1992, turnover fee schedule.
6. Zerodha, charges schedule, zerodha.com/charges (accessed 20 June 2026).