India is introducing a 30% flat tax on crypto earnings. This was announced as part of the budget announcement a few days back. Though this came out as a surprise, we are at least happy that we don't have a full ban on Crypto in India. That's definitely a good thing. But taking a flat 30% tax on our crypto is something that is very painful. Especially people who are having Crypto as their only source of income would find it very difficult.
There are a few ways in which we can directly use Crypto for payments instead of taking it out to the real world and making use of it. I found quite a few ways in which we can make use of our crypto directly. I wouldn't say that these are all ways to cheat the government or mitigate the tax but right now these are all workarounds.
Cryptorefills
This is an interesting website that I saw online. I was looking for options to purchase a few things with crypto directly and I landed here. It looks like a promising website to purchase gift cards and vouchers. The options available on the website are all specific to the country we belong to. But I'm sure there are so many different ways in which we can spend our crypto. Flipkart vouchers and Amazon Vouchers are also available here and I have also used this website to recharge my mobile phone.
The website provides multiple things that are amazing. But the only problem here is the cost. I found out that I had to pay a lot extra to use my crypto directly with cryptorefills. I initially thought it was okay but later found out that the fees or the conversion value was huge and it was a lot cheaper if I had bought things using my card or bank account directly. You can explore and see if this option would be something that will be useful for you. You can also feel free to use my referral link.
www.cryptorefills.com/?ref=sEuqiq2ETI
Paying bills directly with Crypto
There are a few websites available where we can pay our bills directly with crypto. I was able to purchase my domains directly with crypto. I have also been renewing my domains on Namecheap with the help of crypto. There will be a small difference in money. Somewhere close to 1 or 2 dollars but the good thing is that I'm able to pay directly with my desired crypto. I recently bought a few domains with my BCH earnings. The experience was very good.
I'm sure there are also companies working on bringing a credit card or gift card that we can use to do purchases. The cards will mosly be like our regular credit cards but we will be able to refill them with crypto instead of FIAT. As far as I know, there is nothing yet in India but we can expect something similar in the future though.
P2P trading
P2P trading is still a good option. There are a few exchanges that support P2P trading. But the problem is they all have our KYC data. Even if we continue doing P2P trading, these exchanges might give our data to the government if it is demanded. If someone is planning to not pay the taxes, there is a small possibility that government might already know that and can come behind us.
One other possibility to do P2P trading is a manual Peer to peer. If we personally know someone who is selling crypto and if we are planning to purchase crypto, we can do direct trading and I believe in that case, we don't have to pay anything to the government as tax. Blockchain communities or people in the same community can do something like this. I still don't know the legal aspects of this but there is a possibility.
Getting the payment out through a foreign friend
This is the last and final option we can think of. There are still many countries where the crypto situation is cool or the tax is not that much. If we have friends across the world and especially in a country where it is all good to withdraw cryptocurrencies, what we can do is as a favor from them. So basically they will withdraw the amount in their country and do a SWIFT transfer to our Indian bank account or options like Paypal can also be used.
I'm sure the transaction fees would be involved and conversion charges would be involved but it can be definitely lesser than the flat 30% interest. Maybe if we get the money inside with a SWIFT code, we might still have to specify the source to the government and pay our tax accordingly. But people who have crypto as their primary source of income and if their income is less than their tax slab, need not pay the flat 30% that we might have to pay if we were going to withdraw the crypto directly.
Conclusion: These can be considered as workarounds for the crypto situation we have in India. But I'm sure it is the Government's call to analyze and understand if the above are all loopholes and they should handle it somehow to make people pay a fair amount of tax.
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