Gain 100 on one coin, lose 100 on another, and India taxes you 30

Our regulation map now covers 46 countries: 25 legal, 13 restricted, 7 banned and one we still call unclear. India sits in the restricted group, and this morning's enforcement action reads differently once you open its tax entry.

Crypto tax in India is a flat 30% on gains, with 1% withheld at source on each transaction and no offset of a loss on one coin against a gain on another.

“Crypto is legal but with harsh restrictions: 30% tax on income, 1% TDS on each transaction. Many users move to foreign exchanges.”

— Intokened regulation map, intokened.com/en/regulation/india

Quote source: our India entry on the regulation map, checked 20 August 2026

The rule that does the damage

Take a year where you made 100 on one coin and lost 100 on another. Your net result is zero. India taxes the winner in isolation, so you owe 30 on a year in which you earned nothing.

Sweden allows 70% of a loss to be deducted. Canada includes half of gains in taxable income. Portugal exempts anything held over twelve months. Each of those lets a loss meet a gain.

The rate itself is middling. Japan runs crypto through miscellaneous income at up to 55%, South Africa's marginal rate reaches 45% and the United States tops out at 37%. India's 30% sits below all three.

The 1% on every sale

The withholding tax applies to the transaction, not the profit. Sell once and 1% is held back. Sell a hundred times over a year and the tax department has held the full value of your position, in pieces, across those hundred sales.

You get it back. The 1% is creditable against what you finally owe, and our India page lists claiming that credit among the things a resident may do. Getting it back means filing and waiting.

For someone who buys and holds, that is a rounding error. For anyone trading with any frequency, more of the money sits with the Income Tax Department than in the account until the return goes in.

Why the platforms are offshore

India's Financial Intelligence Unit ordered 15 offshore platforms off the local internet this morning, and we measured what that list contains. The tax structure above is the reason those platforms had Indian users to lose.

The 2026 budget kept the 30% rate, kept the 1%, and added a penalty of ₹200 a day for failing to report. The Reserve Bank has opposed crypto throughout, and a court stopped it from blocking transactions outright, which leaves tax policy doing the work a ban would have done.

What our entry lists

Our India entry lists what a resident may do:

• Buy, hold and sell through registered platforms.
• Take crypto as payment and declare it as income.
• Mine, with the proceeds taxed on the same terms.
• Claim credit for the 1% withheld at source when you file.

It also carries the WazirX hack of 18 July 2024, when $230 million left the country's largest exchange and the trail ran to North Korea's Lazarus Group. We checked the entry on 20 August, and this morning's enforcement news changes none of the tax numbers on it.

None of this should be read as personalized investment advice.