Crypto Firms Evade Rs 824 Crore of GST, Binance is Biggest Offender, Bitcoin

The segment of cryptocurrencies has grown rapidly in the country in the last few years. Many firms in this segment have also been accused of irregularities. Some big crypto exchanges have been caught evading Goods and Services Tax (GST) worth more than Rs 824 crore. These exchanges include Binance, WazirX, CoinDCX and CoinSwitch.

The Finance Ministry has told Parliament that only Rs 122.29 crore has been recovered from this GST evasion. In this, Binance Group firm Nest Services has stolen the maximum amount of Rs 722.43 crore. However, the Finance Ministry has not been able to make any recovery from this. Crypto exchange WazirX has evaded GST worth more than Rs 40 crore. In this case, the government has recovered Rs 49.18 crore including interest and penalty. The Finance Ministry has informed that 47 virtual digital asset service providers have registered with the Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act.

Transactions related to cryptocurrency are taxed at the rate of 30 percent. Apart from this, TDS of one percent has to be paid on annual transactions exceeding Rs 50,000. Recently, along with registering with FIU, Binance paid a fine of $22.5 lakh. This fine was imposed in June due to violation of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) of this exchange.

This is the 19th international license for Binance. It has licenses for business in Sweden, Dubai, Kazakhstan and France. Richard Teng, CEO of Binance, had said that the exchange recognized the potential in the country’s Virtual Digital Assets (VDA) market. Binance had received a notice to pay GST of over Rs 772 crore. This notice was issued by the General Directorate of GST Intelligence (DGGI). The reason for this notice is a fee collected from traders in the country. The amount of this fee is approximately Rs 4,000 crore and it was transferred to the company abroad. DGGI’s Ahmedabad zonal unit had detected a glitch in the functioning of Binance.