The Indian Central Board of Indirect Taxes and Customs is working on a proposal to impose an 18% tax on cryptocurrencies. The proposal will be considered by the Goods and Services Tax (GST) Council once it will finalized,
According to the proposal: “Purchase or sale of cryptocurrencies should be considered as supply of goods, and those facilitating transactions like supply, transfer, storage, accounting, among others, will be treated as services; Value of a cryptocurrency may be determined based on the transaction value in rupees or the equivalent of any freely convertible foreign currency; If buyers and sellers are in India, the transaction would be treated as a supply of software and the buyer’s location will be the place of supply. For transfer and sale, the location of the registered person will be the place of supply. However, for sale to non-registered persons, location of the supplier would be considered as the place of supply. Transactions beyond the Indian territory will be liable for integrated GST, and would be considered as import or export of goods. IGST will be levied on cross-border supplies.”