Capital Gains (Law & Practice) (1st Edition, 2026)

This book is built in eight Parts across twenty-six chapters — twenty-four principal chapters and two supplementary ones, 12A and 17A — following the natural order of a capital-gains enquiry: from charge, through computation, to exemption, rate, loss relief and procedure. If you are working a live problem, you can usually turn straight to the chapter you need. If you are new to the subject, you will find the Parts good to be read in sequence, each resting on the one before.

The dual-section convention. Throughout, every provision is cited in the form "Section 72 of the 2025 Act/Section 48 of the 1961 Act." The first reference is the operative law today; the second is the provision under which most of the reported case law was decided. This is the thread that lets you carry six decades of jurisprudence across to the new code with confidence — and see at a glance when a number has merely moved, and when its substance has truly changed.

How each chapter is built. Most chapters follow the same rhythm: a short synopsis; the statutory framework with the bare-Act extract; a scope-and- interpretation analysis anchored in the case law; worked illustrations on hypothetical figures; a litigation map of the points most often disputed; practitioner notes; and a set of key takeaways to close. The key-takeaways boxes are written to stand on their own — read them in a row and you have a rapid revision aid.

The flowcharts. Thirty flowcharts sit at the exact point in the text where their topic arises — the conversion-to-stock-in-trade chart in the year-of-taxability chapter, the cost-of-bonus-and-rights chart in the cost-of-acquisition chapter, and so on. The List of Figures after the Table of Contents shows where each one falls. Every chart distils a decision sequence; the conditions and exceptions live in the prose around it.