Mandate Crypto Disclosures in I-T Returns, Industry Body tells Govt

Saloni.Shukla@timesgroup.com

Mumbai:

Cryptocurrency players have requested the government to treat cryptocurrency as a digital asset and direct individual holders to declare their crypto holdings while filing income tax returns to assuage concerns around the traceability of virtual currencies such as bitcoins.

Crypto players have requested the government to make specific provisions in the Income Tax Act that would lead individual crypto holders of more than ₹50 lakh to declare their assets once a year.

“We have proposed to the government to include cryptocurrency-related disclosures in the schedule AL that would lead to greater transparency in such holdings,” said Ramesh Kailasam, CEO of crypto industry association IndiaTech.org. “Disclosure of such investments by individuals could lead to a transparent audit because currently, the onus is on crypto exchanges which do KYC checks on their own.”

The corporate affairs ministry had earlier made it mandatory for companies to disclose the profit or loss on transactions involving cryptocurrency.

IndiaTech.org has made a five-point policy recommendation for regulating cryptocurrencies, which includes introducing a system to register homegrown exchanges.

The recommendations were shared with the finance ministry, commerce and industry ministry, Reserve Bank of India, and official think tank Niti Aayog.

Sumit Gupta, CEO of crypto exchange Coin DCX, said granting cryptocurrencies a digital asset status will allow people to “buy and trade in it”, avoiding “a permanent ban-like situation”.

The Indian crypto community consists of over 10 million holders with over $1 billion of assets, a daily trading volume of $350-500 million, over 300 startups, tens of thousands of jobs, and hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue and taxes.

Crypto body Indiatech.org has also sought a process for registering Indian exchanges

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