For income tax purposes, your absolute turnover will be ₹12,000 ($|5000| + |-7000|$). The Income Tax Department ignores negative signs and aggregates the absolute value of all profits and losses. Even though your net loss is only ₹2,000, your tax turnover is calculated as ₹12,000.

Leading modern discount brokers (such as Zerodha, Groww, and Angel One) explicitly provide an "Absolute Turnover" column in their downloadable Tax P&L reports. You can directly copy this verified figure into the business schedules of your ITR-3.

No. For delivery-based equity trades (investments), the actual sell value of the shares is considered the turnover, not the absolute profit or loss. Delivery trading is taxed under "Capital Gains", whereas intraday and F&O are taxed under "Business Income".

No. Absolute turnover is calculated solely based on the sum of the absolute values of the net profits and losses on your trades. Brokerage, exchange transaction charges, GST, and Stamp Duty are expenses that are deducted from your turnover to calculate net taxable income, but they do not increase the turnover itself.

The department uses absolute turnover to gauge the scale and volume of your active business operations. A trader with large volumes could make massive profits and losses but end up with zero net income. Absolute turnover ensures that large-scale traders are monitored and audited under Section 44AB if their scale of operation is high.