Miners, minors and developers join investors in seeking clarity over crypto tax

moneycontrol.com:

“I earned over Rs 50,000 last year in crypto through grants and programmes but prefer to take my salary in US Dollars. Many Web3 companies offer to pay salary both in crypto tokens and dollars and many choose crypto tokens,” said 23-year-old Yash Pandey (name changed on request). “The coins that I earn help me to learn and experiment with building new things.”

His company, like many others, works with developers around the world who prefer to earn in crypto tokens. “I worked with several developers in the last couple of years and they prefer to earn in crypto, for contributing to the Web3 space. Last year, I worked with over 100 developers who earned in lakhs but took the remuneration in crypto tokens,” he added.

“There is a lot of confusion at the moment around the new tax regime, and we are all looking for a lot of answers,” said Pandey.

Amid the hue and cry among the crypto investor community about the recently announced tax on virtual assets, these young professionals who work on decentralised projects, are also grappling with concerns around the recently imposed 30 percent tax on virtual assets.

Most of this workforce, including developers, freelancers and marketing professionals, prefers to earn in crypto. There are three modes in which they usually earn through tokens or virtual assets; from the revenue of the app itself (like a royalty); and grants from companies, which allow the developers to experiment and innovate, and raise funding from token sales.

For many, annual incomes in the form of crypto tokens are worth barely Rs 10,000 to 50,000. These developers and miners are concerned that a 30 percent tax on such low incomes could eat up a large share of their earnings.

Tax management and advisory platform ClearTax