Capital Gains Tax 2026-27: The 1 July 2024 Date That Decides Your Bill

Property & investments · CGT

Pakistan’s capital gains rules split on a single date. Buy before 1 July 2024 and how long you hold still matters. Buy after it and it does not.

All Pakistan Taxes desk · 16 August 2026

Capital gains in Pakistan are governed by two separate provisions that are frequently
confused. Section 37 deals with gains on immovable property. Section 37A deals with gains on
securities — listed shares, mutual fund units and certain debt instruments. They share
a structure but not their detail, and applying one to the other produces the wrong number.

Both were substantially reshaped by a single change of date, and understanding that date
resolves most of the confusion around what a disposal will actually cost.

Property under Section 37

For property acquired on or after 1 July 2024, the holding period no longer affects the
rate at all. A seller on the Active Taxpayer List pays a flat 15% of the gain, whether the
disposal occurs after eighteen months or after a decade. The longstanding incentive to hold
property for several years purely to reduce the tax has been removed for these acquisitions.

Property acquired on or before 30 June 2024 remains under the previous regime, where the
rate tapers from 15% toward zero as the holding period lengthens. Both systems are therefore
running side by side, and will continue to for years as older holdings are gradually sold.

The first question on any disposal is consequently not how long you have owned the asset
but when you acquired it. That single fact determines which set of rules applies before any
calculation begins.

Securities under Section 37A

The same cutoff applies to securities, with comparable logic. Listed securities acquired
from 1 July 2024 attract a flat 15% for filers, while companies are taxed at 29% and
non-filers face slab rates rather than the flat figure. One long-standing relief survives
intact: no tax is deducted where a security has been held for more than six years.

For retail investors trading through the exchange, the practical effect is that filer
status and acquisition date now matter more to the after-tax return than the holding period
does.

The non-filer penalty is the number that actually bites

The flat 15% describes what a filer pays. Anyone outside the Active Taxpayer List is
treated considerably less generously, and the gap compounds across property purchases,
disposals, banking transactions and dividend income. A seller who has not filed can end up
paying two to three times what an otherwise identical filer pays on the same transaction.

On any substantial property sale, securing ATL status beforehand is worth more
than any structuring you could attempt afterwards.

That makes the filing deadline and the disposal date connected decisions rather than
separate ones. Our
filer
versus non-filer cost breakdown quantifies the gap with worked figures, and
confirming your current
status takes a couple of minutes.

Withholding at transfer is not the same as your capital gains tax

These two are routinely conflated, and the distinction matters. Tax withheld when a
property changes hands is collected at the point of transfer as an advance. Capital gains tax
is assessed on the gain you actually realised. The withheld amount is adjustable against your
final liability rather than being the liability itself.

The consequence runs in both directions. A seller may find the withheld sum falls short of
the assessed gain and a balance remains payable, or may discover the withholding exceeded the
liability and a refund must be claimed through the return. Neither happens automatically.
Withholding rates were reduced in the last budget — see
the cut to property withholding tax
— but that altered the collection mechanism, not the underlying gain.

Losses, and why they must still be declared

A capital loss on securities can generally be set against capital gains, subject to the
rules governing carry-forward. Losses on immovable property are treated more restrictively,
and the relief available is narrower than most sellers assume.

In either case a loss that was never reported cannot subsequently be used. Disposals should
be declared even where they produced nothing, because an undeclared transaction is both an
unusable relief and a discrepancy waiting to surface against third-party data.

Calculating the gain

The gain is the disposal consideration less the cost of acquisition, adjusted for allowable
costs. For property, the declared value interacts with FBR’s fair market valuation tables,
which have been revised repeatedly — including
substantial
reductions to Islamabad valuation rates and
revisions across six
cities. Those tables affect both the withholding taken at transfer and the gain you are
ultimately assessed on.

Purchase documentation deserves more care than it usually receives. Cost of acquisition is
only worth what you can evidence, and a gain inflated by missing paperwork is taxed on the
inflated figure.

Before you sell

1. Find your acquisition date. It decides which regime applies before anything else.
2. Confirm you are on the ATL, and fix it before the transaction rather than after.
3. Check the applicable valuation table for the property’s location.
4. Assemble proof of your original cost and any allowable expenditure.

Common questions