Dear Readers,

Having after the India's Finance Minister, Mrs. Nirmala Seetharaman announced a heavy taxation on Cryptocurrency with a flat 30% of crypto gains and 1% of TDS on digital assets in the budget of 2022; the volume of trades and investments have significantly reduced in India. India already had the history of brought in Crypto Regulation Bill earlier in 2019 which aimed for a punishable act with fine /imprisonment of upto 10 years for holding, mining, selling, issuing and transferring and use of cryptocurrency. But it was revoked by the Supreme Court of India in March 2020. 

While most of the traders were upset with the Crypto Taxation announcements in 2022, part of the traders were relaxed and relieved that the cryptos are not fully banned.  As the present budget announcement is to be announced in the 1st quarter of 2023, according to various news agencies- various efforts and representations by the apex bodies related to Crypto in India are making constant efforts to appeal the Finance Ministry with various recommendations.

As per the sources, ahead of the Union Budget 2023-2024, the Bharat Web3 Association (BWA), a newly formed cryptocurrency and web3 industry body in India, has written to the finance ministry sharing its concerns and recommendations on taxation and other regulatory measures. The industry body is expected to meet concerned officials from the Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) and others in the coming weeks that were reported by various sources. 

In India, the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) is the regulatory body to oversee securities and commodity market in India under the ownership of Ministry of Finance within the Government of India. This was set up in the year 1988. It is in the aspiration that a special regulatory body like SEBI under the Ministry of Finance to be set up for the Digital Assets that include Crypto.

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI)'s stand is very clear that it is against all the digital assets. The present Governor of RBI Mr. Sakthikantha Das spoken several times in public that RBI wants to have a complete ban for the Cryptos. 

But everyone commented that the Government of India is treating the Digital Assets in the current form only for the Taxation Purpose.

So everyone across various sections of the society are eagerly waiting to look forward the budget 2023 which would be expected to be formally announced in Indian Parliament in 1 Feb 2023. The Government has also invited the suggestions for the Budget 2023 from last week. The deadline to submit the suggestion through mygov.in portal till 10 December, which is 7 more days to go from now. 

Let's see the stand of the Government if strong representations are made for the support of Crypto assets and regulations! 

We are eagerly waiting in India!

In the meantime, the Indian Government has piloted the Digital Rupee- the Central Bank Digital Currency from 1 September 2022 in retail sales in 4 metros in India. We will discuss this in detail with an another separate article.