Does my crypto fall inside India's special crypto tax regime?
The label is set by the statute, not by what a trading platform calls the token. India carved crypto and similar holdings out of the ordinary rules and gave them a category of their own, with a dedicated regime and a deduction taken at the level of the transaction. That matters more than the rate. Once a holding falls inside the category, the ordinary assumptions about set-off, indexation and timing stop being safe to carry across, and the deduction can be taken by someone other than you. We settle the characterisation first and file on that footing, rather than reasoning backwards from how the asset behaved.
Why was tax deducted when I sold a token at a loss?
Because the deduction in this regime attaches to the transfer, not to the profit. It is a transaction-level charge, so it is taken when the consideration moves, whether the trade made money or lost it. The person or platform paying you is the one who has to take it and account for it, which is why the amount you receive is short before you have worked anything out. The deduction is not the final tax. It is a credit against what the regime turns out to charge, claimed on the return, and matching it to your own trade records is the work.
Do I declare Indian crypto gains on my Canadian return as well?
If you are resident in Canada for the year, your income is reported wherever it arose, so the Indian trades come in. India may also have taxed them at source under its own regime. Relief comes through the credit mechanism and the treaty, and it is not automatic: the credit is limited by what the home system charges on the same income, and the two systems may not agree on when the income arose or what it was. We line the Indian deduction certificates up against the Canadian computation before anything is filed, so the credit claimed is one that can be supported.
Is crypto on a foreign platform reportable as foreign property?
The coin does not decide it. Reporting regimes were written for assets that have a place and an institution standing behind them, and a token has neither in the ordinary sense, so the answer is worked out from the arrangement rather than from the asset. Two things drive it: what the platform actually holds on your behalf, and which regime is asking, because some reach accounts and some reach property generally. The same holding can fall inside one and outside another on identical facts. Since the platform may have changed hands or closed by the time the question arrives, the reasoning and the evidence belong in writing in the year the position is taken.
Can I set a crypto loss against my salary income?
Do not carry the ordinary set-off assumptions across. A dedicated regime decides for itself whether a loss can be used at all, against what kind of income, and in which year, and those answers are usually narrower than the general rules an adviser reaches for first. The safe order of work is to fix the characterisation, then read the regime, then compute, rather than netting a year of trades into one figure and declaring the result. Where a loss turns out to be stranded, that is worth knowing before the return is filed rather than after.
How do I file when the exchange has closed and kept no records?
It is reconstructed from what survives on your side. Bank statements show money going in and coming out, and the dates bracket the trades. Wallet addresses give a record on the chain that does not depend on the platform. Any deduction certificate or statement you downloaded while the account was live is worth more than it looks. From that we build a schedule, state the assumptions on its face, and file on it. A documented reconstruction that names its own gaps is a defensible position. A tidy figure with nothing behind it is not, and it is the one that invites a question.
Branch or subsidiary — which should we use to expand?
A branch keeps one taxpayer: results consolidate at home, losses are usable sooner, and the exposure is that the branch is a permanent establishment whose profit the host country taxes, sometimes with a branch tax on repatriation. A subsidiary is a separate taxpayer with limited liability and local rates, at the cost of withholding on dividends home and transfer pricing on everything between them. The deciding facts are usually expected losses, liability and exit plans. See branch against subsidiary.
Do I get credit for all of the foreign tax I paid?
Only up to your own country's tax on that same income, and only for tax you were legally obliged to pay. Two consequences follow. Living somewhere that taxes you more heavily than your residence country does leaves an excess that becomes a carryover rather than a refund. And withholding suffered above the treaty rate is not creditable — the route back to that money is a refund claim in the country that took it. See claiming the credit.
