Stamp Duty on Share Transactions: Who Pays It, at What Rate, and How It Shows Up in Your Costs

Open any contract note and somewhere between the STT line and the GST line sits a small figure called stamp duty. Most of us skim past it. That’s mostly fine, because it is the smallest of the statutory charges on an equity trade, but stamp duty on share transactions has a few quirks worth knowing: only one side of the trade pays it, the rate changes with the type of trade, and on a handful of special windows like buybacks the burden flips to the seller.

This guide walks through the current rates as published by NSE, who actually collects the money, and what the charge looks like in rupees on real-sized trades. All the worked examples below use round, made-up trade values so the arithmetic is easy to follow.

What stamp duty on share transactions actually is

Stamp duty is a government levy, and for listed securities the law behind it is the Indian Stamp Act, 1899. NSE’s investor page explains that the Finance Act, 2019 amended that Act for securities traded through stock exchanges, and from July 1, 2020 stamp duty on these trades has been levied and collected by the clearing corporations that the exchanges authorise. You can read that note at the bottom of NSE’s stamp duty page for investors.

In practice that means you never pay it separately. Your broker shows it on the contract note, and the clearing corporation collects it as part of settlement. Zerodha’s charges page describes the line simply as stamp charges levied under the Indian Stamp Act of 1899 for transacting in instruments on the stock exchanges and depositories.

So it isn’t a broker fee. It is a statutory levy, which is why Zerodha, which charges zero brokerage on equity delivery, still lists stamp charges against delivery buys.

What changed in July 2020

If you traded before 2020, you may remember stamp duty looking different from one contract note to the next. Zerodha’s Z-Connect note on uniform stamp duty explains why. Until then, the rate depended on the state you lived in, and brokers collected it from clients and paid it monthly to the respective state governments. Zerodha says most states charged in the range of ₹200 to ₹300 per crore on intraday and derivatives trades and ₹1,000 per crore on equity delivery, and a few, such as Telangana and Haryana, capped the amount per contract note.

From July 1, 2020 the rate became the same everywhere. The FAQ published by NCCL, the commodity clearing corporation, puts it plainly: the percentage does not vary from state to state. Zerodha’s note flagged three practical effects at the time:

• The new rates apply only on the buy side, not on both buy and sell, so Zerodha estimated stamp duty costs would fall by over 50% for most of its clients.
• Active traders in states that had a per-contract-note cap lost that cap, so some of them ended up paying more.
• Off-market transfers of shares or mutual fund units through a delivery instruction slip (DIS), which earlier carried no stamp duty, became chargeable at the delivery rate of 0.015% on the consideration amount written on the slip.

Current stamp duty rates by type of trade

NSE publishes one table that covers equities, derivatives and debt. The rows that matter for most retail traders are these:

Source: NSE’s SEBI turnover fees, STT and other levies page (updated April 17, 2026) and its stamp duty page. The repo row, which charges 0.00001% to the borrower, is left out because it rarely touches an individual’s account.

A quick translation into per-crore terms helps, and Zerodha’s page lists it that way: 0.015% is ₹1,500 per crore of buy value, 0.003% is ₹300 per crore, and 0.002% is ₹200 per crore.

Stamp duty is charged once, on the buy leg. Sell the same shares a year later and that sale carries no stamp duty at all, except in the special windows NSE singles out.

Who pays: the buyer, with one big exception

For ordinary trades, the buyer pays. Every row in NSE’s table for shares, futures, options and bonds says “Buyer”. If you buy 100 shares and sell them next month, you pay stamp duty on the purchase and nothing on the sale.

The exception is the row for offers for sale (OFS), tender offers for takeovers, buybacks and delisting. There the 0.015% rate stays the same, but NSE marks the payer as the “Offeror (seller)”. So when you tender shares in a buyback through the exchange window, the selling side is the one charged. It’s a small amount either way, but it surprises people who are used to seeing stamp duty only on purchases.

What the charge looks like in rupees

Percentages this small are hard to feel. Here are five worked examples. The trade values are hypothetical and picked to keep the maths clean.

Example 1: a delivery purchase

You buy shares worth ₹1,00,000 for your long-term portfolio.

• Stamp duty at 0.015%: ₹1,00,000 × 0.00015 = ₹15
• You sell the same holding later for ₹1,10,000: ₹0 stamp duty on the sale

For context, STT on delivery is 0.1% on both the buy and the sell side according to NSE’s levies table. On this round trip that is ₹100 on the purchase and ₹110 on the sale, ₹210 in all. Stamp duty, at ₹15, is roughly a fourteenth of that.

Example 2: an intraday round trip

You buy shares worth ₹5,00,000 in the morning and square off at the same value before the close.

• Stamp duty at 0.003% on the buy: ₹5,00,000 × 0.00003 = ₹15
• STT at 0.025% on the sell side (NSE table): ₹5,00,000 × 0.00025 = ₹125

Same ₹15 of stamp duty as Example 1, on five times the trade value. That’s the non-delivery rate doing its job.

Example 3: a futures trade

Say you buy one futures contract with a notional value of ₹15,00,000. This is a hypothetical value, not a real lot size.

• Stamp duty at 0.002%: ₹15,00,000 × 0.00002 = ₹30

Note that the duty is on the contract value, not on the margin you put up. A trader blocking a fraction of that as margin still pays on the full ₹15 lakh.

Example 4: buying options

On options, the duty is worked out on the premium, not on the value of the underlying. NCCL’s stamp duty FAQ says this in so many words for options it clears: ₹3 per lakh of premium turnover, calculated on the value of the option premium. Say you buy option contracts and the total premium you pay is ₹10,000.

• Stamp duty at 0.003%: ₹10,000 × 0.00003 = ₹0.30

Thirty paise. Because the base is the premium, stamp duty barely registers on most option buyers’ contract notes.

Example 5: a mutual fund purchase

Mutual fund purchases carry their own rate. Zerodha’s note lists 0.005% on the buy side and says the duty is adjusted in the units allotted rather than charged as a separate bill. On a ₹10,000 investment that is ₹10,000 × 0.00005 = ₹0.50, so you get units for ₹9,999.50.

When it adds up: the active trader’s view

On a single trade, stamp duty is a rounding error. Repeated hundreds of times, it becomes a line item you can actually see.

Take a trader who does 20 intraday round trips a month, each with a buy value of ₹2,00,000. Monthly buy turnover is 20 × ₹2,00,000 = ₹40,00,000. At 0.003%, stamp duty comes to ₹120 a month, or ₹1,440 over twelve months at that pace.

Now switch the same trader to delivery trades of the same size and count. The rate jumps to 0.015%, five times higher, and the monthly bill becomes ₹600, or ₹7,200 a year. Nothing dramatic, but it’s real money coming out of a small account, and it is charged whether the trade wins or loses.

We’d still say stamp duty is rarely the cost that breaks a strategy. STT is usually the bigger statutory line, and for illiquid stocks the hidden cost of the bid-ask spread can be far larger than any statutory levy. Our explainer on impact cost on NSE covers that side of the bill.

Stamp duty is paid on every buy, profitable or not. Over a year of frequent trading, it’s one more reason churn costs more than it looks.

Where to find stamp duty on your contract note

Every contract note lists stamp duty as its own line, usually next to STT, exchange transaction charges, SEBI fees and GST. If you’ve never read one closely, our guide to the contract note, line by line shows where each charge sits.

Two things to check when you look at yours:

1. It should appear only on buy trades for normal equity, futures and options orders. If your sell-only day shows stamp duty, ask your broker why, unless it was a buyback or OFS window.
2. The rate should match the trade type. NSE’s table charges a buy settled by delivery at 0.015% and a non-delivery buy at 0.003%. If you convert an intraday position and hold it for delivery, expect the higher figure.

Stamp duty also sits outside the GST calculation. Zerodha’s charges page shows GST at 18% on brokerage, SEBI charges and transaction charges, and stamp duty is not in that list. So you won’t see GST charged on top of stamp duty.

How stamp duty compares with the other statutory charges

It helps to see the levies side by side for a plain delivery trade, using the rates published on NSE’s levies page:

• STT: 0.1% on delivery buys and 0.1% on delivery sells
• Stamp duty: 0.015% on the buy side only
• SEBI turnover fee: 0.0001%, which NSE expresses as ₹10 per crore
• GST: 18% on broker services, collected by the broker

Exchange transaction charges vary by exchange and broker plan, so check your broker’s own page. Zerodha, for example, lists NSE transaction charges of 0.00307% on equity delivery and intraday.

Put together, the delivery investor’s biggest statutory cost is STT, and stamp duty is a distant second. For intraday traders, both drop to lower rates, but STT on the sell side, at 0.025%, is still the larger of the two, as Example 2 shows.

Practical takeaways

• You don’t file or pay stamp duty yourself on exchange trades. It is collected through settlement and shown on the contract note.
• The buyer pays on normal trades. Sellers pay only in the special OFS, takeover tender, buyback and delisting windows NSE lists.
• Delivery buys cost 0.015%, intraday buys 0.003%, futures 0.002% and options 0.003% of premium.
• Government securities carry no stamp duty, and most debt instruments carry 0.0001%. Mutual fund purchases carry 0.005%, adjusted in your units.
• For anyone trading often, add stamp duty into the cost per trade when you work out position size and breakeven. The risk management in trading guide shows how costs feed into those numbers.

Rates can change through future Finance Acts or notifications, so before you plan around them, glance at NSE’s levies page and your broker’s charges page. Both pages list the rates currently in force.

Disclaimer: This article is for education only and is not investment, tax or legal advice. The trade values in the worked examples are hypothetical and used only to show the calculations. Rates are taken from NSE, NCCL and Zerodha pages as available at the time of writing and may change, and your broker’s charges may differ. Please consult a SEBI-registered adviser or a tax professional before making decisions.