India's tax policies on income from digital asset

[kryptqnick]

It's just a proposal, so maybe it won't be like this, but India hasn't been crypto-friendly for a while. A 30% tax is very high, and if it also applies to selling and transferring, it basically makes everyday use of Bitcoin impossible. Taxes should be reasonable and progressive, starting at a very low rate. And transfers shouldn't be taxed at all, and neither should small capital gains be taxed. I hope they'll come up with something better, though. Something that motivates people to pay taxes and use cryptos. Because bad regulations tend to motivate people to stay in the shadows, simply, so the state doesn't get much in taxes.

[1715346763]

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[coolcoinz]

They had a lot of people protesting against bans and they know a ban looks bad and puts them on a map along with some authoritarian regimes like China, so the best course of action was to avoid it. At the same time they want to discourage people from using cryptocurrencies so 30% tax is going to work good. From my libertarian point of view, this tax is abusive, but fortunately I don't live in India. We all have a choice. If the government is abusive, move somewhere else.

[Questat]

They had a lot of people protesting against bans and they know a ban looks bad and puts them on a map along with some authoritarian regimes like China, so the best course of action was to avoid it. At the same time they want to discourage people from using cryptocurrencies so 30% tax is going to work good. From my libertarian point of view, this tax is abusive, but fortunately I don't live in India. We all have a choice. If the government is abusive, move somewhere else.

those who understand the benefits that we get from Bitcoin will certainly ask to unbanned and as support for this. But those who are ignorant and pretending a victim of a huge crypto scam will surely be happy and even encourage the government leaders to stop and put an end.
I'd never find another reason why India's leaders are proposing 30% tax to all crypto holders as it possibly they wanted to discourage people to use and invest this. That actually isn't fair but has nothing to do when officially sealed as legal.

[Findingnemo]

Unfair taxes will actually forces the people to evade it or they will find alternatives to hide the source so p2p transactions will again preferred by traders so they can report the source as others and pay less taxes and its a big blow for the exchange users because they can't avoid reporting since KYC is mandatory in all the exchanges operating there.

[Silberman]

It's just a proposal, so maybe it won't be like this, but India hasn't been crypto-friendly for a while. A 30% tax is very high, and if it also applies to selling and transferring, it basically makes everyday use of Bitcoin impossible. Taxes should be reasonable and progressive, starting at a very low rate. And transfers shouldn't be taxed at all, and neither should small capital gains be taxed. I hope they'll come up with something better, though. Something that motivates people to pay taxes and use cryptos. Because bad regulations tend to motivate people to stay in the shadows, simply, so the state doesn't get much in taxes.

Obviously we hope this is the case for all bitcoin users that are located at India, but I do not think this will be the case, politicians think of the country as belonging to them and not to the people, so they think that whatever laws that they pass are going to be followed by the people no matter what, however when a law is unfair people have the option to use civil disobedience and ignore the law, and bitcoin thanks to its decentralized nature could allow this to the people living at India.

[laredo7mm]

If you're wondering why they used 'Digital Assets' instead of 'Currency', they do not recognized crypto as a currency. The PM said it only becomes a currency when it is issued by the Central Bank (CBDC) and anything outside it is an Asset.

What are your thoughts on this?

They used "Digital Assets" because they are mentioning NFT too along with cryptocurrencies. They haven't passed any law about cryptocurrencies but implemented a tax on them. This is clear that they are discouraging their people to invest in crypto assets.  They implemented a tax for legalizing your crypto transaction but it's still unregulated in India. They were close to banning cryptocurrencies in India but haven't done it by seeing a lot of money invested there.

I think they are just trying to say "Do not invest in cryptocurrencies" indirectly.

[Flexystar]

That is definitely straightforward decommissioning strategy of the crypto currencies in India I guess. They simply don’t want their Indian people to go and invest into crypto freely. Or there is another possible way to earn some good bucks from the taxes and let their people use the crypto. In either way government of India seems to be on winning side here. I am just seeing one positive thing here, they have thought this through and trying to win the hearts of their people. I mean this is perfect politics, they neither deny the fact of using crypto nor using it freely. So it’s up to the people of India whether to use the crypto or not. They are allowed to use it but they have to pay good amount of tax for the same. Well played by PM I guess.

[fiulpro]

When we talk about the taxation in a country as big as UK even, the government have two kinds of taxation proposed for normal tax payers the tax is 10% and for higher tax payers, it's 20%. Considering the taxation in India, where lies immense poverty, corruption, upheaval of the economics one have to understand how irrational it is to ask people to pay 30%.

30% is not just justifiable, it's actually something that is very wrong, justifying it means justification of corruption in the government. They have to understand that this is supposedly a very important means for some people, eventually government might take the freedom away from them, they might try and also ban it to make room for digital rupee.

[The Cryptovator]

The Tax is ridiculous to me, it will encourage trading crypto in the black market. So the government will lose Tax. We know citizens' behavior, they will fund some way to skip Tax. Likely they will use the decentralized and non-custodial wallet to store and trade cryptocurrency. We have to keep in mind, a centralized organization like the government will not give you many facilities to use cryptocurrency since it's decentralized. The president describe what he understood, it's not about all that a president should have depth knowledge about cryptocurrencies. That's why he is calling it a digital asset.

[Mahanton]

The Tax is ridiculous to me, it will encourage trading crypto in the black market. So the government will lose Tax. We know citizens' behavior, they will fund some way to skip Tax. Likely they will use the decentralized and non-custodial wallet to store and trade cryptocurrency. We have to keep in mind, a centralized organization like the government will not give you many facilities to use cryptocurrency since it's decentralized. The president describe what he understood, it's not about all that a president should have depth knowledge about cryptocurrencies. That's why he is calling it a digital asset.

Neither they havent realized that on which the step they had made is totally opposing on what  they are trying to achieve which is mostly in talks of taxation.. 30% is totally that absurd
and if they are trying to suppress those services around via doing this upscaling the tax then it would really just  result into more engagement on black market or be done
underground which the thing you have said is true on where people would tend to find out ways and methods on avoiding such fees no matter what the cost.

[Distinctin]

That's like a robbery, and considering it's taken from the income of sale, it only says to discourage the use of digital assets like bitcoin. Well, maybe it will also result to an understatement of sales, but if the government is very strict in implementing then people who would prefer a digital asset has no choice but to comply with the law.

[Sithara007]

Being a resident of India, I don't understand the criticism that is being directed towards the new proposal. Those who are arguing against it are completely ignorant of the facts. The existing tax rate on profits from cryptocurrency is up to 43%, since it is classified as ordinary income. Now the government has classified profits from crypto as capital gains, and the tax rate has come down to 30%. And this rate is comparable to tax on capital gains from other assets such as gold and real estate. Obviously you can't expect crypto to be taxed at a rate that is equal to that for stocks.

[Flyingjack123]

Indian government is always slow to respond properly, India has got highest number of crypto investors in terms of numbers
This step will be a demotivation, and eventually India will never be able to be frontrunner in crypto world.. maybe they will realise it late and then become crypto friendly

[Sled]

Being a resident of India, I don't understand the criticism that is being directed towards the new proposal. Those who are arguing against it are completely ignorant of the facts. The existing tax rate on profits from cryptocurrency is up to 43%, since it is classified as ordinary income. Now the government has classified profits from crypto as capital gains, and the tax rate has come down to 30%. And this rate is comparable to tax on capital gains from other assets such as gold and real estate. Obviously you can't expect crypto to be taxed at a rate that is equal to that for stocks.

Well, you know more about your country and how your government manages to collect taxes from the people. Eventually, the majority could say that it was too big as they compared it to their respective places/country, and even me. Here in my country, we don't pay that much, not even it surpasses 20% but can't imagine in your place was 30% tax to be collected, even it was just a proposed plan but in the eyes of the majority that seems unacceptable.

[pinggoki]

Indian government is always slow to respond properly, India has got highest number of crypto investors in terms of numbers
This step will be a demotivation, and eventually India will never be able to be frontrunner in crypto world.. maybe they will realise it late and then become crypto friendly

They've got a big country so that's to be expected plus India has been like this with crypto for awhile now so I don't think that it's really that big of a deal that we are going to make a fuss about it because I am sure that it's going to be forgotten in a months time if not a year. Also, I am sure that crypto users in India would find a way to make sure that they don't pay those taxes.

[Gyfts]

Anyone that understood government overreach saw this coming, this is a ban by proxy, a 30% tax rate is insane.

Legalization of crypto isn't what's up for a discussion in most countries. It's the overregulation and excessive taxation that forces ordinary and institutional users of crypto to divest into other assets and use traditional fiat currency. I've seen people celebrate that a country hasn't banned crypto, citing a rather innocuous attempt of mere "regulation."

This is what regulation looks like, making crypto unattractive as possible with disproportionate tax rates. I can guarantee you India has a significantly lower effective tax rate on capital gains on any other asset. Crypto coincidentally is the odd one out.

[CryptopreneurBrainboss]

its just a proposal and provably many people who use bitcoin will protest against it since this plan made by their official can really hurt their pockets.

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Oh so it's just a proposal and yet I see all over the media that Bitcoin now legal in India with this as focus point, such misinformation. This isn't better than a ban. The citizens should protest. This is daylight robbery and if this get passed into law it will demoralized many people from getting involved in the cryptocurency space to avoid high taxation. I bet this is exactly the government game plan.

If I was a citizen I'll prefer a ban then we enthusiast looks for other alternative to participate in the industry and this will drive up the peer2peer transaction awareness and volume in the country. Take a look at Nigeria, every opportunity the government get they try convince Nigerian into not getting themselves engage with the industry yet their plans fails. They even tried launching their own so better version;f Bitcoin but failed.

[Bttzed03]

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Oh so it's just a proposal and yet I see all over the media that Bitcoin now legal in India with this as focus point, such misinformation.

It's considered as such probably because it was announced by the Indian Prime Finance Minister herself. It's like written in stone already even without the written law as one of the journalist said.

~ The existing tax rate on profits from cryptocurrency is up to 43%, since it is classified as ordinary income.

Was it? The new tax table was further divided into more categories compared to the old one but the max for both was still 30%.

[Cling18]

I wonder why they don't consider crypto as a currency yet implement a huge percentage of taxation from it. I'm sure that crypto users will suffer from it but still have no choice if the government would implement it. That's how the government would really work over crypto, if they can't regulate crypto, they will tax it.

[Bttzed03]

I wonder why they don't consider crypto as a currency yet implement a huge percentage of taxation from it.

I already explained the reasoning why it's not a currency to them in the OP. Also, it doesn't have to be classified as such before it could be taxed. Stocks aren't considered as currencies and yet income derived from investment and trading are subjected to tax.

That's how the government would really work over crypto, if they can't regulate crypto, they will tax it.

Tax crypto income first, more regulations on centralized exchanges and custodial wallets to follow