Budget May Give Structure to Crypto Taxation, Says Jayant Sinha 

The Budget will help give taxation of cryptocurrencies a structure, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MP Jayant Sinha told Times Now on February 1, as the country awaits the announcement of the Union Budget 2022. The right time for a crypto Bill will be when there is a global consensus.

There have been various speculations on introduction of a taxation structure for cryptocurrencies.

Outlook Money earlier reported that the government is unlikely to come up with a regulation on cryptocurrencies in the Budget session of Parliament, but some industry experts confirmed that the government may move on the taxation front.

Earlier in November, the meeting between the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Finance and cryptocurrency industry members was chaired by Jayant Sinha, on the subject of “CryptoFinance: Opportunities and Challenges”. Ahead of the meeting, Sinha told PTI, “We have called stakeholders from across the industry including operators of major exchanges, members of CII as well as academics from the Indian Institute of Management (IIM) Ahmedabad, who have done a very thorough study on crypto finance.”

Earlier, a crypto expert told Outlook Money on the condition of anonymity, “GST (on cryptocurrencies) is likely to remain the same—at 18 per cent. Moreover, the direct and indirect tax will be together above 30 per cent,” he said.

On January 31, while addressing a press conference, principal economic advisor Sanjeev Sanyal said that they have not covered the cryptocurrency issue in the Economic Survey 2021-22. "This issue is a matter of some debate both inside the government ministry of finance and even in Parliament. We understand the various issue of cryptos such as financial stability and this is a balanced view from our side," said Sanyal.  

In the meantime, the price of Bitcoin was up by 4.21 per cent and was trading at $38,544.47 at 10:20 pm, while Ethereum (ETH) was trading at $2,739.36, with a rise of 9.41 per cent in the last 24 hours. Binance Coin (BNB) was up by 3.56 per cent over the same period and was trading at $382.81, according to data from Coinmarketcap.com.