In a recent discussion, I realized that stock brokers may sometimes charge statutory fees such as Securities Transaction Tax, Stamp Duty, SEBI Turnover Fees, and Exchange Transaction Charges either incorrectly or in a way that is not immediately transparent to the client.
Unlike brokerage fees, which can vary across brokers, these Statutory Charges are fixed and regulated, so any discrepancy should, in theory, be detectable.
This got me thinking. There seems to be an opportunity to independently extract the actual statutory charges from the AGTS and compare them against the net or tax P&L reported by the broker’s back office. Doing so could help verify whether the broker has overcharged, intentionally or unintentionally.
Has anyone come across a tool or workflow that enables this kind of reconciliation?
In a letter dated March 5 to the NSE, the I-T department highlighted that certain brokers and sub-brokers had collected STT in excess from clients but had not remitted the amount to the government account for FY24 and preceding years.