I have a couple of questions I needed clarity on wrt to tax. Say an individual had bought crypto a long time back (2013-2015 period) and had barely sold any crypto for cash. This would obviously mean substantial sums in todays INR value if converted.
I think long-term capital gains tax is needed to be paid here, but better to go for a CA who supports BTC transactions and can help out openly in such matters. If you need assistance, I know someone who can be of help.
1) a) Is the person required to declare our crypto holdings in the Income Tax returns ?
Can't really say much over this as the current environment is still too hot in terms of cryptocurrencies in India, I'd hardly suggest you to do that until a regulation is passed here. Instead, go for "income from other sources" issue where you can show anything like these transactions (but not in a way that it's anywhere related to crypto).
b) If answer to a is YES - What if a person has not declared any crypto holdings so far in any of the previous returns ?
You can give them a simple answer - As there was no such rule on how to declare such holdings, everyone was fearing to show such transactions in their sheet and so you also didn't show them up.
2) How do people deal with exchanges doing down/missing records ?
No worries, make an Excel sheet.
Whenever you carry out a transaction, you just need to keep the record yourself in that sheet (make it like a P/L statement) and take a screenshot of that trade wherever occurred.
3) Are crypto to crypto transactions taxable ? If so - how ?
If they ever become taxable, I'll be the first to leave this crypto space. How and on what basis do you think that these Govs would ever tax crypto to crypto transactions? It's fiat they need to take care about, nothing else.
Any other general advice that one needs to know for such individuals ? Trying to help a friend.
As said, I'd rather go to an experienced personnel rather than going on forum's opinions, that's because someone you can find locally who is experienced as well as a CA too can be greatly helpful in such matters instead of discussing it here as you maybe getting biased opinions on this and you just can't do it like voting system which will decide whom you should go with.