Indian Bitcoin investors may have to share their profit with unwanted guests, the Indian income tax authorities. According to the daily news paper Economic Times (ET), income tax authority is tracking Bitcoin investors for the taxation. Tax department has collected the information about trades through banking channels confirmed before Reserve Bank of India banned crypto in India in April 2018 (the ban has been lifted by Supreme Court)
Sumit Gupta, the CEO of Indian cryptocurrency exchange CoinDCX told that,
“The tax authority can also monitor earnings of cryptocurrency investors registered through KYC/AML compliant exchanges like CoinDCX and through national identity documents such as the PAN card”
According to some tax consultants it is forecasted that there will be the 30% tax on cryptocurrency gains. For now most of them are advising to the Crypto investors that they file Bitcoin returns as capital gains, which are associated with stocks.
According to the newspaper article, active Bitcoin trading would be considered as speculative business and it is taxed with normal rates. On the other hand authorities will treat infrequent or or hodling as capital gain, long term or short term, depending upon the period and will be taxed as capital gain rates.
But still the Indian income tax authorities has not categorised cryptocurrency gains under any specific roofs. The Sumit Gupta told,
“Currently, if an investor submits his Income Tax declaration, the amount of earnings generated by investing in cryptocurrencies is highlighted under Income from Other Sources”
Still the whole process is not cleared by authorities, so the Indian Crypto investors are in confused state of mind. Indian government does not see Bitcoin as a legal tender but still it is not illegal to hold or trade Bitcoin in India. Many firms are advising Indian government to legalize Crypto trading as stock trading including the Think Tank CEO.
Please share your thoughts over the take of Indian authorities and government on crypto taxation.
If you're an Indian crypto investor/trader, share what you're planning for tax returns, share you're plans or thoughts over it in comments.
30% is big.. Lol