Global crypto tax compliance and portfolio tracking firm CoinTracker on Wednesday announced its India foray. “Starting today, the crypto tax compliance and portfolio tracking products will be available to all crypto users across India,” it said in a statement.

Given that a lot of crypto users in India use CAs to do their taxes, CoinTracker allows users to add their accountant to complete tax reports for crypto with ease by aggregating exchanges and reconciling complex transactions, it further said.

The foray comes at a time when the government has rolled out a scheme for the taxation of virtual digital assets. With $100 million Series A funding, CoinTracker is using it to build products and expand into regions like India. The company is also upbeat about its prospects in India despite the muted cryptocurrency trading volumes in recent weeks.

‘Providing solutions’

“CoinTracker enables users to comply with taxes. We don’t need users to transact a lot. Our job is to provide a solution to the problem. As crypto goes through a negative adoption wave, there will be slightly lower demand but we take a long-term view as markets go back to a more positive cycle. Then taxes and portfolio tracking will become more important for users,” said Jon Lerner, CEO, CoinTracker.

In a press conference on Wednesday, he said India is already the second-largest country based on a number of users using CoinTracker globally. “With this official expansion into India, we are quite excited to offer our product officials and fully serve the users,” he said.

The base product is free of cost while prices for other products start from ₹699. The company also believes that the government could possibly look at the tax provision which does not permit offset of losses but the 30 per cent tax rate is not very stringent.

Shehan Chandrasekera, Head of strategy-tax, CoinTracker said, “Taxpayers not being able to offset losses against gains is on the stringent side and something the Indian government can look into.” He further said that he doesn’t think investors make investments solely on basis of tax.

“Cryptocurrency is a new concept. It is great to see the Indian government has come out with a clarification on tax rates. They recognise it as something happening on a global scale. I don’t think the 30 per cent flat tax rate to be very strict. In the US, the short-term capital gains tax is as high as 37 per cent,” he noted.

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