Increasingly crypto payment has become the preferred method for making payment online, especially for micropayments of a few cents or less. Yet in a clear case of flawed policy making in the indian internet sector, the government is very harsh in penalizing online workers receiving crypto payment imposing taxes of 30%, falsely claiming that it is very profitable.
The online workers making a few cents are paid at extremely low rates, making even less than maidservants and offline workers, yet the government refuses to treat them like other service providers and tax them based on their revenues. At present the service providers with revenues of less than Rs 20 lakh do not have to pay service tax, and service providers receiving crypto payment should be similarly exempted.
At present, in one of the best kept secrets of the indian tech and internet sector, government agencies are wasting taxpayer money paying salaries to fake experts, usually the relatives, friends and associates of top government employees. These work at home fraudster government employees do not have any online income, do not invest money in domains and do not do any computer work, yet get monthly salaries only for faking bank account, domain ownership since 2010 using stolen data.
Repeating lies like parrots has created the illusion of truth and now the government agencies really think that their cybercriminal employees are online experts, when they are only making fake claims using stolen data. Relying on the cybercriminal government employees for formulating the crypto taxation policy leads to harassment of online workers making very less money by well paid corrupt government employees abusing their power. these harassed online workers making great losses then complain online, adversely affected the image of india.
Many citizens are working online because they have few other alternative options due to extortion rackets, resume robbery and other frauds of powerful government employees, rich and powerful communities, high levels of corruption . While the government may continue taxing online traders who have plenty of money to invest online, it is time that the government revises its crypto taxation to prevent harassment to online workers, making very less money, typically only a few dollars monthly.
