High TDS hitting Indian crypto trading

Ahmedabad: Cryptocurrency exchange Pi42 co-founder and CEO Avinash Shekhar said lowering TDS and allowing losses to be adjusted against profits would not only boost trading volumes for Indian crypto exchanges, but also increase tax revenues as investors will shift to domestic bourses from offshore ones. Speaking with reporters here, Shekhar said the Indian exchanges are hopeful that the Centre would take into account the requests of domestic crypto exchanges and bring in necessary changes during the union budget.

Shekhar in February co-founded ‘Pi42’, India’s first Crypto-INR Perpetual Futures Exchange, which is outside the TDS net for being a ‘futures’ exchange. After the government imposed one per cent TDS on spot crypto transactions, volumes of Indian exchanges came down as traders moved to international exchanges which are beyond the compliance net, said Shekhar.

“Trading in Indian cryptocurrency exchange has reduced due to TDS rule. People are now trading more on foreign exchanges. Government’s objective was to control this activity to an extent and bring transparency and visibility, like who is doing what. But that objective is not fully met. Foreign exchanges are not providing information to the government,” he said.