Eleven Indian crypto exchanges evaded Rs 81.5 cr GST, government says

Mumbai: The Central Goods and Services Tax (CGST) authority recovered Rs 95.86 crore from 11 crypto exchanges that collectively evaded Rs 81.54 crore in GST, said Minister of State for Finance Pankaj Chaudhary, in a written response to a question in the Lok Sabha on March 28.

Chaudhary said while the government does not collect any data on cryptocurrency exchanges, a few “cases of evasion of Goods and Services Tax (GST) by cryptocurrency exchanges have been detected by Central GST formations.”

The CGST had detected GST evasion to the tune of Rs 81.54 crore. With penalties, these exchanges paid Rs 95.86 crore, Chaudhary said.


Chaudhary named 11 cryptocurrency exchanges - CoinDCX, BuyUcoin, CoinSwitch Kuber, Unocoin, Flitpay, Zeb IT Services Pvt Ltd, Secure Bitcoin Traders Pvt Ltd, Giottus Technologies, Awlencan Innovations India Pvt Ltd (ZebPay), Zanmai Labs (WazirX), and Discidium Internet Labs.

Zanmai Labs, according to the list, evaded the highest amount of GST – Rs 40.51 crore – followed by CoinDCX (Rs 15.70 crore) and CoinSwitch Kuber (Rs 13.76 crore).

While scrutiny on crypto exchanges for GST evasion came to light in January, the extent of the evasion was previously unknown.

On January 4, ET reported that multiple crypto selling platforms were being scrutinised for tax evasion. The platforms have previously said that they did not have clarity on "applicable provisions".

On March 25, the Lok Sabha approved the Finance Bill 2022, turning into law the new tax framework for crypto assets that finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman had proposed in her budget speech in February.