Today (December 31st 2013 at 11.30am) there was a visit from IRS headed by a Deputy director, Income tax department – Investigation wing, Bangalore. Out of that two guys had attended bitcoin conference on Dec 15th.
After they completed their formal procedures by the team, they checked some CoinMonk Ventures registered objectives and also KYC documents of Unocoin customers.
Then there was a dicussion on bitcoin and its mining, technical possibility to apply income tax to miners and bitcoin business in general, possible regulation at entry and exist level at exchanges.
I have provided them some documents related to bitcoins and KYC collected from Unocoin customers as per their instructions.
A summons issued to have me visit them in Bangalore. All i can say regarding today discussion is, I was able to lead it in as positive way.
Info on visit to I T dept office in Bangalore on 1st Jan 2014: Met with a couple of higher authorities and the discussion was around technology and traceability. Presently they have instructed me to submit a paper describing how bitcoin works, how transaction works, how to mine bitcoins and what happens technically in bitcoin mining, to what extent bitcoins are traceable and what role an authorized exchange can play, how bitcoin can be misused and if it can be mitigated in some way, what is the view of bitcoin from various other countries, and my opinion on how bitcoin can be taxed for speculators and miners. I will be working on this once i am back from Mumbai.
I did question IRS Dy Director that if he knows any law or clause that we are violating if we continue our Unocoin service as long as I T department is concerned and declare income and pay income tax for which he has replied that we should be fine for now. How ever he said he cannot talk on behalf of other departments and have asked me to take legal opinion before I start Unocoin service again – and I am in the process of doing so.
I am visiting Mumbai for two days from tomorrow for a press meet along with Nishith Desai associates to talk about the present situation of bitcoin in India and asking authorities through media to react to the present situation asap.
– Sathvik Vishwanath
Founder CEO of CoinMonk Ventures Private Limited
