Tax officials raid top cryptocurrency providers in India: Report

The Directorate General of GST Intelligence (DGGI) on Saturday (January 1) raided the offices of major cryptocurrency service providers in the country.

News agency ANI quoted sources as saying that the DGGI had detected massive tax evasion.

On Friday the GST Mumbai East Commissionerate said it had detected tax evasion of ₹40.5 crores by WazirX and recovered ₹49.20 crore from the exchange in tax, interest and penalty.

“Around half dozen offices of cryptocurrency service providers have been searched and massive GST evasion has been detected by DGGI,” one source said.

Crypto wallet and exchange are platforms where merchants and consumers can transact with digital assets like Bitcoin, Ethereum, Ripple, etc.

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According to sources, around ₹70 crore worth of tax evasion has been detected during the crackdown by Mumbai CGST and DGGI.

The DGGI is investigating Coinswitch Kuber by M/s Bitcipher Labs, CoinDCX by M/s Neblio Technologies, BuyUCoin by M/S I Block Technologies and Unocoin by M/s Unocoin Technologies, the sources said.

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“They are providing facilitation intermediary services for buying and selling of crypto coins. These services attract GST rate of duty of 18 per cent which all of them have been evading,” the source said.

Another official source, who was part of the search, told ANI: “These service providers were charging a commission for their facilitation to indulge in exchange of Bitcoins but were not paying GST. These transactions were intercepted by DGGI and they were confronted with evidence that proved non-payment of GST.”