It's absolutely ridiculous to tax people on their profits out of bitcoin investment and how can they do it as it stalemate sort of think for crypto in India wherein nether they have termed it legal nor illegal.
It doesn't matter. As per income tax act in India, you have to pay taxes on all types of incomes - legality doesn't matter. Even if you are engaged in drug selling business and get caught, you are still required to pay taxes on your income first and then you are proceeded with criminal trial. I was searching for the exact lines from my old tax books and finally found it:
even if they want to tax then on what basis they are going to decide the tax amount as investors might not just store his fund idle, whether profit or loss the user will keep reading or shifting to different coins wherein they cannot accurately decide a taxable figure and this will lead to chaos.
Actually it won't lead to chaos. Income Tax Act is very flexible in regards to traders. If you are doing large number of trades, shifting between coins every now and then, then there is a provision of 'speculative business' in the Act. You don't have to calculate exact amounts of profits, just take the total of all sales value and all purchase value, deduct the total of sales from the total of purchases and the net amount is your speculative profit if it's positive.
Note: Only short-term buy/sell transactions can be considered for speculative business. If you are holding coins for over 3 years then you can't mix those with speculative business and have to pay Capital Gains on the profits of those coins separately.
But hey look at the bright side. At least one more country supports cryptocurrencies now. Who knows, maybe 30% might not come true at all since people are just anticipating it anyway.
Actually article is slightly misleading. No one is saying cryptocurrencies are going to be taxed @ 30%. Cryptocurrencies so far and I expect in future are be considered as any normal trading instrument. So if you are holding it for more than 3 years and then sell, the tax rate is 20% (20.8% with cess). If you sell it within 3 years, the tax rate depends upon the total income you earned. The lowest tax slab is 5% (5.2% with cess) to the highest of 30% (31.2% with cess).
PS: If anyone wanna read in-detail thread about taxation of cryptocurrencies in India as per current situation:
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/guide-how-bitcoin-and-cryptocurrencies-are-taxed-in-india-5206607