Long-term capital gains tax restructured: LTCG segregated and taxed separately while preserving basic exemption and transitional relief.
Clause 197 prescribes segregation of long-term capital gains from other income, taxing non-LTCG income under the normal progressive regime while subjecting LTCG to a separate rate; resident individuals/HUFs may reduce LTCG to preserve the basic exemption to the extent reduced total income falls short of that threshold. A transitional relief for resident individual/HUF transfers of land or building acquired before a specified cutoff requires dual computation-new LTCG method versus an indexed-cost prior-rate computation-and ignores any excess new-regime tax up to the calculated difference. The enacted Act adds a carve-out for non-resident/foreign-company disposals of unlisted or private-company shares excluding section 72(6) set-off.