Telangana minister KTR seeks to take up crypto industry's cause with Centre

KT Rama Rao (Image: Facebook/@KTRTRS)

Telangana's IT and Industries Minister KT Rama Rao seeks to lobby the Indian government on behalf of the crypto industry to address their concerns.

"One of the things that I want to do, my principal secretary (Jayesh Ranjan) has been on top of this, is we want to take it up with the Government of India and understand what exactly their concerns are and we also want to play that role being a sort of advocate, partner for the industry," said Rama Rao in a podcast.

The concerns for the crypto industry have been myriad. Earlier this year, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman announced a one percent TDS and income tax on gains from virtual digital assets (VDAs) including cryptocurrencies in this year’s budget.

The industry has been worried about the one percent tax deduction as it will pose a logistical nightmare to crypto exchanges. In June, the industry was also grappling with reducing trading volumes ahead of the implementation of the TDS in July.

Apart from that, after November 2021, a lot of Indian entrepreneurs moved to Dubai and registered their businesses anticipating high taxes and stringent rules around cryptocurrencies.

"I would be more than happy to work with the crypto industry, leaders who are migrating to Dubai and other places, to sit with them, to have a conversation with them and go and meet the Finance Minister, Commerce Minister and IT minister and tell them that we cannot afford to have this," the minister said.

"Because on one hand, the government is saying that there is not enough clarity on how to go about handling crypto, and at the same time the government went ahead and put a tax on crypto in the budget. So, it was a bit of an ambivalent stand so to speak," he added.