Today was the day we have been waiting for patiently in India and yes it was the Day the Budget of India was released and talked about in the Parliament. Even though there were a lot of Discussions made and a lot of nice decisions were made I was concerned about the Future of Crypto in India as I was hoping for some mention of Crypto Regulations or something related to Crypto. But what I was not expecting was that our Finance Minister will just classify a new Tax Bracket especially for Crypto Investors with some hefty Taxes. As you can now understand from the Title the Tax that has been levied upon us Crypto Investors is 30% which means whatever we earn in Crypto or whatever we make profits in Crypto will be charged at 30% Tax Rate without and Deductions at all.
The only Deduction that we could claim in our Crypto Assets is the Seed Money we put into Crypto or you could say the Principal Amount you put in as Investment. For example, you Invested 1000 USD in Bitcoin, and in a month your BTC became 1500 USD then if you decide to withdraw that BTC into FIAT then you will pay a 30% tax on your Profit which is 500 USD. Basically, it is a glorified Capital Gains Tax with the slight chance of the fact that here your Crypto Losses will not be negated with your Crypto Profits. There is also a 1% TDS charge on all transactions and I am still not sure about the details of this TDS Charge but surely I will make another post detailing the TDS later sometime when I have more Data.
All in all, I am happy that finally Crypto is being given some sort of recognition by the Indian Government even though they never uttered the word Cryptocurrency in the Parliament. It was labeled as Crypto Assets and later on Finance Minister also clarified that this does not mean Crypto is fully Legal in India as they are still under deliberations for a set of Regulations upon Crypto.
Now if I have to point out a Negative Point that would be the fact that we are charged the Highest Tax Bracket the country has to offer and that is somewhat discouraging but also I know that we had to start at some point and I am glad that we are now at the Starting Line for the Regulation of Crypto in India.