Government recovers Rs 95.86 crore from 11 crypto exchanges, here’s what happened

The government on Monday said Rs 95.86 crore has been recovered from 11 cryptocurrency exchanges for evasion of Goods and Services Tax (GST).

The total amount includes penalties and interest.

In a written reply to Lok Sabha, Minister of State for Finance Pankaj Chaudhary said 11 cases of evasion of GST by cryptocurrency exchanges have been detected by Central GST formations.

Evasion of Rs 81.54 crore was detected and Rs 95.86 crore was recovered (including interest and penalty), he said.

As per the reply, Rs 49.18 crore was recovered from Zanmai Labs (WAZIRX), Rs 17.1 crore from Coin DCX, and Rs 16.07 crore from CoinSwitch Kuber.

Zanmai Labs (WAZIRX), Coin DCX, CoinSwitch Kuber, Buy Ucoin, UnoCoin and Flitpay were among the exchanges that were involved in GST evasion cases.

Others were Zeb IT Services, Secure Bitcoin Traders, Giottus Technologies, Awlencan Innovations India (Zebpay) and Discidium Internet Labs, according to the finance ministry.

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Tax on Cryptocurrency from April 1

Starting April 1, 2022, all forms of virtual digital assets (VDA), including Cryptocurrency, NFTs sold for profit will be taxed at 30 per cent. Apart from this, whenever a crypto asset is sold, then 1% TDS will also be deducted.