The Central Goods and Services Tax (CGST) authority recovered Rs 95.86 crore from at least 11 crypto exchanges for evading GST, said Minister of State for Finance Pankaj Chaudhary, in a written response to a question in the Lok Sabha.

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 GST investigation department has found a total tax invasion of Rs 81.54 crore by crypto exchanges. The timeline for these investigations was not disclosed in the response.

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Chaudhary named 11 crypto 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.

The CGST had detected a GST evasion of around Rs 81.54 crore, with interest and penalties, these exchanges paid Rs 95.86 crore, Chaudhary said.

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According to data, Zanmai Labs which operates under the brand name WazirX, evaded Rs 40.5 crore. WazirX exchange is managed by Zanmai Labs and cryptocurrency WRX is owned by Binance Investment Co. Ltd, Seychelles. The total recovery was around Rs 50 crore from the exchange which includes interest and penalty.

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The department claimed that during the probe, it came to the notice of officials that the taxpayer used to gain revenue from the commission as trading fees, deposit fees and withdrawal fees.

CoinDCX evaded Rs 15.70 crore followed by CoinSwitch Kuber (Rs 13.76 crore) and Giottus Technologies Pvt Ltd (Rs 3.85 crore).

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On March 25, Lok Sabha, the lower house of the Parliament 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 2022-23 speech on February 1.