The proposal of long-term capital gains tax will not have much impact on the National Pension Scheme (NPS), a top Pension Fund Regulatory and Development Authority (PFRDA) official has said.

“It will not have much impact on us. Investments in the National Pension System are made by our trust (NPS Trust), which is a tax-exempted body. As far as pension investments are concerned, LTCG will not have an impact,” NPS regulator and PFRDA Chairman Hemant Contractor said here yesterday.

Contractor said this on the sidelines of a conference on NPS in association with Stock Holding Corporation. However, it will have an impact on tier-II accounts also known as a non-pension account, he said. NPS manages two types of accounts -- tier I and tier II. “Tier II has no tax benefits. The Tier II account would be impacted but the investments corpus in tier II is much smaller,” Contractor said.

Budget 2018 had proposed to re-introduce long-term capital gains tax on gains arising from the transfer of listed equity shares exceeding Rs 1 lakh at 10 per cent (excluding cess). The same also implies on mutual funds. The total NPS corpus is currently Rs 2.25 lakh crore from a base of two crore subscribers.

“Our subscriber base is growing by 27-28 per cent a year. We just touched the two crore subscribers’ mark. In March, there were about 1.54 crore subscribers. We expect to maintain the same pace of growth next year,” Contractor said. PFRDA also expects its Asset Under Management (AUM) would grow by 45-47 per cent in the next year.

Speaking on the Atal Pension Yojana, he said the pension fund body has targeted reaching one crore subscribers under the Yojana by March 31. “We currently have about 88 lakh subscribers with Rs 4,000 crore and we are trying hard to achieve the target in the remainder of the year. Next year we will try for another 50 lakh,” the PFRDA chief said.

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