India’s income tax authority is considering taxing profits made on bitcoin investments, CoinDesk reported, citing The Economic Times.
The tax department has been tracking those who are making money during bitcoin’s price rally and could soon announce a tax of up to 30 percent, according to the report.
“The tax authority can also monitor earnings of cryptocurrency investors registered through KYC/AML compliant exchanges like CoinDCX and through national identity documents such as the PAN card,” Sumit Gupta, CEO of Mumbai-based cryptocurrency exchange CoinDCX, told CoinDesk.
Experts are advising investors to file bitcoin returns as capital gains, associating them with stocks. Currently, they are normally classified as “Income from Other Sources,” according to CoinDesk.
Bitcoin is not a legal currency in India, but holding it is not illegal, CoinDesk reported. India’s Supreme Court reversed a ban on crypto trading back in March, PYMNTS previously reported.
In other news, Ripple Labs sold over $15 million of stock in MoneyGram, according to Cointelegraph, citing a new Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filing.
In the filing, Ripple reported selling 2,264,113 shares in the money transfer company between Nov. 27 to Dec. 4, selling off shares in multiple transactions each day. The sales totaled $15,303,792.60.
“Ripple is a proud partner in MoneyGram’s digital growth transformation,” Ripple told Cointelegraph, referencing their strategic partnership announced in June 2019. “This is purely a judicious financial decision to realize some gains on Ripple’s MGI investment and is in no way a reflection of the current state of our partnership.”
The companies teamed up to use Ripple’s xRapid product to accelerate foreign exchange settlements for MoneyGram’s cross-border payments, and Ripple invested $50 million in MoneyGram.
