The Centre has detected goods and services tax (GST) evasion worth Rs 824.14 crore by crypto exchanges, such as Binance, WazirX, CoinDCX, and CoinSwitch Kuber, the Lok Sabha was informed.
However, it has recovered only Rs 122.29 crore, including interest and penalty.
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In a written reply on Monday, Minister of State for Finance Pankaj Chaudhary said the Binance group company accounted for the largest amount of GST evasion, worth Rs 722.43 crore, but no recovery has been made by the finance ministry so far.
WazirX evaded GST worth Rs 40.51 crore, of which the government has recovered Rs 49.18 crore, including interest and penalty.
Further, CoinDCX and CoinSwitch Kuber evaded Rs 16.84 crore and Rs 14.13 crore, respectively, with recoveries of Rs 20.86 crore from CoinDCX and Rs 19.38 crore from CoinSwitch Kuber.
According to the finance ministry, 47 Virtual Digital Asset Service Providers (VDA SPs) had been registered as reporting entities with the Financial Intelligence Unit-India under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act, 2002.
Income from cryptocurrency transactions is taxed at a flat rate of 30 per cent, along with a 1 per cent tax deducted at source (TDS) on transactions exceeding Rs 50,000 annually.
The current GST Act does not define crypto or digital assets, however, the term virtual digital assets was introduced in the finance budget.
Notably, since March 2023, crypto assets have been brought under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA), requiring exchanges and crypto service providers to comply with certain standards.
