The most underestimated change in Indian crypto compliance is reporting integration. Since FY 2023-24, FIU-registered exchanges feed your trades directly into your Annual Information Statement. The IT Department sees your activity before you sit down to file.
What the AIS shows
The Annual Information Statement (annualinformationstatement.in or via the income tax e-filing portal) shows: total VDA transfers, TDS deducted under 194S, individual transactions over thresholds, and more recently, deposits and withdrawals from registered exchanges.
Form 26AS is more limited but shows TDS specifically — a row for every 1% deduction credited to your PAN.
What 'reporting' means in practice
When you file ITR, the AIS pre-populates many fields — your gross VDA transfer value is already there. If your Schedule VDA total wildly mismatches the AIS figure, the system flags it and a mismatch query goes out automatically.
Foreign exchanges with FIU-IND registration (Binance, KuCoin, OKX, Bybit etc.) are now in this loop. Pre-2024 you might have stayed off-radar by trading on a foreign venue; that gap is closed.
What's still off-radar
Truly off-platform P2P (direct UPI between two retail individuals, no exchange wrapping) doesn't show up in AIS — but the receiving bank account does, and large UPI inflows trigger their own reporting from the bank to FIU. The grey area is shrinking, not safe.
Key takeaways
- AIS pre-populates VDA data from FIU-registered exchanges.
- Form 26AS shows TDS credit; AIS shows transfer values too.
- Mismatches between Schedule VDA and AIS auto-flag your return.
- Off-platform P2P is less reported but increasingly visible via banking-side AML signals.
