ClearTax ties up with Zebpay to offer tax guidance on cryptocurrencies

Income tax return filing platform ClearTax on Friday said it has tied up with virtual-coin exchange Zebpay to offer tax guidance on cryptocurrency. The move comes almost two months after the Union government said it does not consider cryptocurrencies an official medium of payment.

In addition to counselling, ClearTax has also launched tax return filing services, assisted by chartered accountants, for those having gained from the sale of cryptocurrencies. The CA-assisted service also offers tax planning.

ClearTax, which claims to have a subscriber base of 2.5 million, had raised $12 million (over Rs 80 crore) in a Series A round led by Ravi Adusumalli of Saif Partners in June 2016.
 
“Instead of spending the capital raised on advertising, we will be investing in building technology products and in engineering talent from within India and the Silicon Valley,” Archit Gupta, chief executive and founder of ClearTax, had said after the fundraising.

He had then said the company was looking to tap areas such as consumer and business taxes, tax savings and investments. Other investors in the company include Sequoia Capital; Max Levchin, cofounder of PayPal; Vijay Shekhar Sharma, founder of Paytm; and Naval Ravikant, seed investor in high-profile companies like Uber and Twitter.

ClearTax’s partner Zebpay had raised around $1 million (around Rs 6.6 crore) in Series A round from Claris Life Sciences chairman and managing director Arjun Handa; Jindal Worldwide managing director Amit Jindal; and others in January 2016.

Meanwhile, Drivezy, Cashaa and Wand X have raised money by selling digital tokens, and cryptocurrency exchange Unocoin has found new ways to offer products in exchange for bitcoin.