When the Union Budget 2021 laid strong foundation for Digital growth, the 2022 budget made announcements which accelerates the digital media growth further.
The Budget has proposed the introduction of digital rupee using BlockChain other technologies to be issued by the Reserve Bank of India starting 2022-2023.
Nirmala Sitharaman in her budget presentation said that the Central Bank Digital Currency will give a boost to the digital economy. Digital Currency will also lead to a more efficient and cheaper currency management system.
Announcement on spectrum auctions was also done during the Budget 2022. Spectrum auction will be conducted in 2022 to facilitate roll out of 5G mobile services within 2022-23 via private telecom providers.
A scheme for design led manufacturing will be launched to build a strong ecosystem of 5G as part of production linked incentive scheme. To enable affordable broadband and mobile service in proliferation in rural and remote areas, 5 percent of annual collection under universal service obligation fund will be allocated. This will provide and promote R&D and commercialisation of technologies and solutions.
Owing to the phenomenal increase in transactions in virtual digital assets. The magnitude and frequency of these transactions made it imperative to provide a specific tax regime. The budget highlighted a 30 percent tax on any income from the transfer of virtual assets like cryptocurrencies, Non Fungible Tokens (NFT) etc. No deduction is allowed while computing income except cost of acquisition and the loss cannot be set off from any other income.
TDS of 1% on payment made for transfer, above a monetary threshold.
A task force on animation visual effects, gaming and comic promotion will be set up to recommend ways to serve markets and global demand.
“An AVGC promotion task force with all stakeholders will be set up to recommend ways to realize this and build domestic capacity for serving our markets and the global demand,” Sitharaman said.
