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Wazrix, COIN DCX, CoinSwitch Kuber and 8 other leading top crypto exchanges of the country have been fined amounting to over Rs 81 Crore for evasion of GST tax. While Rs 81 crore was the official figure as calculated in terms of fines & penalties, the Finance Ministry ended up recovering much higher amount. The final amount recovered from the 11 crypto exchanges is quoted to be around Rs 95 Cr
This information came to light after the Ministry of Finance responded to a query on the floor of parliament. This development comes as hardly surprising since earlier this month the news was already out that tax authorities are likely to go behind crypto investors who are defaulting on GST tax.
Nearly 50% of the Rs 95 crore GST due was paid by Wazrix, which is one of the leading crypto exchanges of India. Since last year Wazrix has already been earning lot of bad press due to its constant face-off with tax authorities while the latest news will further add to its bad press. However, Wazrix shrugged off the latest GST notice after claiming that there was ambiguity regarding a GST component, eventually leading to miscalculation in GST. Wazrix clarified the same while talking to news portal Entrackr.
50% or rest of the dues were paid by the 10 other crypto exchanges who had to pay relatively smaller amount. For instance, Coin DCX had to pay Rs 17.10 Cr, BuyUCoin had to pay Rs 1.10 Cr and CoinSwitchKuber had to pay Rs 16.7 Cr respectively.
Indian government’s hot pursuit against crypto exchanges has come barely a month after the Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman announced during her budget speech that all digital assets like cryptos and NFTs will soon be taxed around 30%. However, the Indian government has categorically maintained that by bringing ‘digital assets’ under taxation does not mean that virtual assets will enjoy legal tender status.
List of Crypto exchanges notified for Tax evasion
- Wazrix
- Coin DCX
- CoinSwitch Kuber
- UnoCoin
- Flitpay
- Zeb IT Services Pvt Ltd
- Secure Bitcoin Traders Pvt. Ltd
- Giottus Technologies Pvt Ltd
- Zebpay
- Discidium Internet Labs Pvt ltd
