I built a tool to help Zerodha investors reduce capital gains tax – looking for feedback

Hey folks,

I built a tool called TaxHarvestLab because I ran into this problem myself:

Most Indian retail investors don’t actively plan their capital gains tax. Typically we either:

  • forget to book LTCG within the ₹1.25L exemption
  • miss obvious loss-harvesting opportunities
  • or end up doing messy, manual calculations at ITR time

By the time we realize, the financial year is already over.

What this tool does

The tool takes your broker reports (Zerodha for now):

  • Tradebook (last 12 months)
  • Holdings
  • Tax P&L

And tells you, as of today:

  • exactly which stocks/ETFs to sell
  • how much quantity of each
  • how much tax you’ll pay if you sell now
  • how much you can legally save through tax harvesting

So instead of abstract numbers, you get actionable instructions.

How this is different from Zerodha’s tax harvesting report

Zerodha’s report is useful, but it’s only at an aggregate level.

It does not tell you:

  • which specific stocks to sell
  • how many units of each
  • what the exact post-sale tax impact looks like

In short:

  • Zerodha answers: “How much can I save?”
  • This tool answers: “What exactly should I sell to save it?”

Edit:
Removing the links to the website directly so avoid being flagged as promotional.

The tool is free and is meant to add a very important missing feature that has been a pain point for many users.

NOTE:
The website does not store any user data / trade data therefore doesn’t even have a login requirement.

Hope this helps the community and feature to save and plan their taxes this FY.

3 Likes

Very useful, thanks! :rocket:
Can’t test it out as there are no losses to offset this FY, maybe next year! :smiling_face_with_tear:

2 Likes

There is no reason why someone should upload their personal zerodha tradebook, holdings, and tax P&L to an unverified tool. no privacy policy, data deletion guarantees, or security audits mentioned. rather stick to official zerodha reports + manual calc for tax harvesting. don’t be fooled by random developers. potential misuse, data breaches or resale.

1 Like

what about others? who is tax harvest guy? are they registered? where are the licenses?

They don’t need to register anywhere for this service. I’m skeptical with this these kind of services too, but I don’t think there’s anything wrong with the website, if they indeed adhere to their own privacy policy.

Hey, @livepositionaltrader thanks for taking the time to comment. I understand the concerns related to privacy and it’s essential especially with financial information. I’m the developer, you can checkout my profile at https://ronitjain.in/

The tool is designed to make the calclautions on RAM and dispose off the data. If you reload, you’ll need to provide the data again to see your dashboard.

Also, you don’t necessary need to use the tool, there’s a cool explaination use-cases page that explain things if you wanna do stuff manaully Capital Gains Tax Scenarios India | LTCG STCG Examples | TaxHarvestLab | TaxHarvestLab

I’ll try to if there are more ways I can mitigate the security/privacy concern, open to feedback and suggestions for improvements in this and all other fronts.

1 Like

Haha, no losses is a good thing :rocket: :smile:

Open sourcing the main optimization engine with option to run completely locally.

1 Like

Hm, :thinking: yeah.that does help the people willing to run it locally.

Redact your personal info before uploading it. :point_left:
The trades themselves are meaningless without your personal details like client ID, name, or PAN. :four_leaf_clover:

@Ronit_Jain I’m getting a not-so-helpful error:

Errors
Analysis failed
1 Like

Exactly! Just remove or redact personal information in the downloads from Zerodha. I was thinking of this and trying it out.

Zerodha had been tweaking this and I’m not very confident on the figures it shows. As it stands, the Zerodha tax loss harvesting report is not useful. It may result in harvesting losses and having huge capital gains. What I’m looking for is the exact list of stocks (based on FIFO) where I can harvest some losses and how much of which stock I should sell. I’ll try your site out. Thanks for making this.

I do have one question: what’s the planned business model for this site?

2 Likes

@nithin These should be official zerodha features, not something we need to rely on 3rd party sites for :slight_smile:

3 Likes

Hey, thanks for trying it out. Maybe, parsing issue because of formatting changes, let me fix it right away. If possible can you please share more info for better debugging using the contact form on the website

1 Like

Hey, thats the exact pain point this is trying to solve. Appreciate your comment. Thanks

what’s the planned business model for this site?

Unsure as of now. Planning to keep it free as long as possible, have to bear the server costs though.

But the featues in the pipeline are as follows:

  • Direct integration with brokers through Oauth. Zerodha API doesn’t provide most of these details through API though that’s why the manual process as of now.
  • One click execution of the recommended plan
  • Options to tweak / customize the plan in case user have preference to sell one stock over the other
  • One click buy back so users can get the old holdings back once the trade is booked on paper
1 Like

Hey @pavinjoseph improved file parsing so that users can now delete their sensitive info like client Id, client name, pan info from the report before submitting. Hope this helps, let me know if you’re still stuck. Thanks

1 Like

Nice tool, but we should have option to delete the data.

1 Like

Nice and clean UI. The separate section for the Sell Plan, with detailed quantity and amount, is particularly useful. Great initiative it will definitely help a lot of traders and investors.

2 Likes

Great, the parsing and errors are much improved! :100:

I didn’t realize it couldn’t perform analysis for MF holdings, I have no equity holdings at this time! :grimacing:

When I give the MF tradebook:

File parsing failed: Holdings: No holdings with available quantity found in the file.
Tradebook: Could not find 'Equity' sheet in Tradebook file. Please ensure you're uploading the correct Zerodha Tradebook report.

When giving the equity tradebook:

File parsing failed: Holdings: No holdings with available quantity found in the file.

In its defense, I don’t have any equity holdings so not a fault on its part. :face_holding_back_tears:
I think the webpage and errors should emphasize uploading EQ reports to avoid any confusion for new users! :warning:

Yep, the UI design is very pleasant! :rocket:

2 Likes

Thank you, appreciate your comment