The 0.6% stock transaction tax on the sale of listed PSE shares.
Stock transaction tax
—
Effective rate
—
Net of this tax
—
A tax on the sale, not on the gain
Selling shares that are listed and traded on the Philippine Stock Exchange triggers a single, clean tax: the stock transaction tax, which this calculator applies at 0.6 percent of the gross selling price. The word that matters is gross. This is not a tax on your profit. It is a tax on the full amount you sold for, calculated before any consideration of what you originally paid. Your broker withholds it automatically and remits it to the Bureau of Internal Revenue, so you never file or pay it separately.
That structure has a sharp consequence. Because the tax keys off the selling price and ignores your cost, you owe it even when you lose money. Sell at a profit and you pay 0.6 percent of the proceeds. Sell at a loss and you still pay 0.6 percent of the proceeds. There is no version of selling listed shares where this tax does not apply, which makes it fundamentally different from a tax that only bites when you come out ahead.
A PHP 100,000 sale, worked through
Take the tool's default of a PHP 100,000 gross selling price. The tax this calculator applies is 0.6 percent, so the computation is PHP 100,000 multiplied by 0.006, which is PHP 600. That leaves you net proceeds of PHP 99,400 from this tax alone. The effective rate is exactly the headline rate, 0.6 percent, because there are no brackets, no exemptions, and no thresholds to navigate. Whatever you sell for, multiply by 0.006 and you have the tax.
| Step | Value |
|---|
Why listed shares are taxed this way
The 0.6 percent transaction tax exists in lieu of capital gains tax. When you sell listed shares through the exchange, you are not assessed the usual capital gains tax on your profit at all. The flat sale-based tax replaces it entirely. This is a deliberate design choice that keeps the public market simple to trade in, since brokers can withhold a fixed percentage at the point of sale without anyone having to compute gains.
Listed versus unlisted: the same word, two taxes
Contrast this with shares in a private, unlisted company. Sell those and you fall under a completely different regime: capital gains tax on the net gain, which sits at 15 percent for unlisted domestic shares as modelled elsewhere on this site. So the same word, shares, can mean a 0.6 percent tax on the sale price or a 15 percent tax on the gain depending entirely on whether the company is listed on the exchange. That gap is large, and it is one of the quiet reasons retail investors favour the public market.
Treat the 0.6 percent as the figure to verify, not gospel. The transaction tax rate is set by law and can be amended, so confirm the current rate with the BIR before relying on it for a large disposal. The structure, a flat tax on gross proceeds collected by your broker in place of capital gains tax, is stable and is the part worth internalising.
Does the transaction tax cover all my trading costs?
No. It is only the tax line. A real PSE sale also carries broker commission, 12 percent VAT on that commission, a PSE transaction fee, and an SCCP clearing fee, all on top of this 0.6 percent. To see the complete picture of a buy-and-sell round trip, use a full trading-cost calculator rather than this single-tax tool.
Do I need to report this tax on my income tax return?
Generally no. Because the transaction tax is a final tax withheld by your broker at the point of sale, the gain on listed shares is not added to your annual taxable income and you do not declare it again on your income tax return. This is part of what makes trading listed shares administratively light compared with selling unlisted shares, where you must file and pay the capital gains tax yourself.