The tax is not applicable for any redemption that you make upto 31 March 2018. Secondly, the grand fathering clause means that gains only from 31 January 2018 are taxable. So far markets have not shown any gains since 31 January.
Over the long term, you can minimise the impact with two strategies:
- Stagger redemption so that you utilise the one lakh exemption per year. There is talk that this may be increased to two lakh rupees. More that this exemption will benefit 95% of investors since average folio sizes in equity funds are just around Rs 80k as per AMFI data.
- You can club your redemption with any other long term capital gain losses so that the effective tax is zero.