Who takes a piece, and for what
Six parties, in the order they appear on a contract note.
Your broker charges brokerage for carrying the order. This is the only one that is negotiable, and the only one that varies enormously — from nothing at all on delivery trades at some brokers to a percentage of turnover at others.
The exchange charges a transaction fee on the value traded, for running the matching engine you met in 01.04.01.
SEBI charges a turnover fee, which funds the regulator whose job 01.08.01 described.
The central government charges securities transaction tax, STT, on the value of the trade. On delivery it is levied on both the buy and the sell; on an intraday trade, only on the sell.
The state government charges stamp duty on the buy side, at rates harmonised across states since 2020, so it no longer matters where you live.
The depository, through your broker, charges a DP fee when shares leave your demat account — a flat amount per company per day, regardless of how many shares.
And then GST on part of it
Goods and services tax at 18% is charged on the services in that list — brokerage, the exchange transaction fee and the SEBI fee.
It is not charged on STT or on stamp duty, because a tax is not a service. This is why the GST line on a contract note never quite matches 18% of the total, and why people conclude the arithmetic is wrong when it is not.
Six charges, two of them taxes on the trade, one a tax on the services, one a fee from a regulator, one from the exchange, one from the depository — and one, brokerage, from the only party in the list you chose.
- Value bought · 10 shares at ₹500
- ₹5,000.00
- Brokerage · a zero-delivery-brokerage account
- ₹0.00
- Securities transaction tax · 0.1% on the buy
- ₹5.00
- Exchange transaction charge · about 0.003%
- ₹0.15
- SEBI turnover fee · ₹10 per crore
- ₹0.01
- Stamp duty · 0.015% on the buy
- ₹0.75
- GST · 18% of brokerage, exchange and SEBI fees
- ₹0.03
Now do it with brokerage, and watch the shape change
Keep every other line identical and add ₹20 of brokerage, which is what a flat-fee account charges per order.
Brokerage ₹20, and the GST line rises from three paise to ₹3.63, because GST is charged on brokerage. Total charges become roughly ₹29.50 — about 0.59% of the trade, five times the first version.
The statutory charges did not move. They are percentages, so they scaled with the trade and stayed tiny. Brokerage is a flat amount, so it did not scale at all — and on a ₹5,000 order it dominates everything else combined.
Reverse it. On a ₹5,00,000 order the same ₹20 is 0.004% and disappears, while STT at 0.1% becomes ₹500 and is suddenly the whole story. The charge that matters depends entirely on the size of the trade, which is why one rule of thumb cannot cover both.
A flat fee is a percentage in disguise, and the smaller your trade the larger the percentage.
Selling costs more than buying
If you sold those ten shares — and you have not; this is what it would cost — the sell side adds two things the buy side did not have.
STT again, another 0.1% on delivery, because delivery STT is charged on both legs. And the DP charge, a flat fee of the order of ₹15 to ₹20 per company per day for taking shares out of your demat account. On a ₹5,000 sale, that single flat charge is around 0.3% or 0.4% on its own.
So a complete round trip on ten shares — in and out — costs somewhere between about 0.5% and 1.5% depending on the account, almost all of it driven by the two flat fees rather than the percentages.
Which gives you the only number that actually matters here: the share has to rise by that much before you have broken even. Not risen at all — risen past your costs.
Intraday is cheaper, and that is not a recommendation
An intraday trade, bought and sold the same day without delivery, is charged differently. STT is levied only on the sell leg and at a lower rate, stamp duty is lower, and no shares move so there is no DP charge.
The honest reading of that is narrow: for the same turnover, an intraday round trip carries less statutory cost than a delivery round trip. It is a fact about tax law.
It is not a reason to trade intraday. The costs that sink intraday traders are not on this page at all — they are the spread and the slippage of 01.09.02, paid on every entry and every exit, many times a day. Cheaper per trade is a poor consolation for many more trades.