On January 1 of this year, a new law regulating the turnover of cryptocurrency in Russia came into force. Now the income from the purchase and sale of digital finance is subject to mandatory declaration, otherwise, a violation of the law will be recorded and, accordingly, the violator will face punishment in the form of administrative or criminal liability. Everything is more or less clear, regarding administrative penalties but for what the owner of the cryptocurrency can be imprisoned, it is worth understanding in more detail.
According to the law on digital financial assets, some changes were made to the criminal and tax code, as well as the administrative and criminal procedure code. The changes also affected the wording of the law regulating money laundering, obtaining illegal income and supporting terrorist transactions. As for cryptocurrency, today in the legislation it is defined not as money, but as property and, therefore, is subject to taxation on an equal basis with other types of property that can become the basis for making a profit. The legal regulation of digital finance turnover was tightened so that taxpayers could not cover their income received using cryptocurrency transactions.
Each individual or legal entity is required to annually file a declaration of income received from transactions using cryptocurrencies, but only if the profit exceeds 600 thousand for the past financial year. That is, if a trader receives 5 thousand rubles of income from cryptocurrencies every month, he can freely not declare such income and nothing will be paid for it. And if the income is about 55 thousand rubles a month, then the amount of more than 600 thousand rubles will accumulate over the year, which is subject to declaration.
If a taxpayer has evaded paying taxes not once, but 2 times over the past three financial years, then a case is brought against him/her and transferred to the court. In addition, the amount of taxes that was not paid by the taxpayer is important. If for 3 years of non-payment of taxes, about 2.7 million rubles or more have accumulated, and it is proved that the user intentionally evaded paying taxes, he/she faces a prison sentence for a period of up to 1 year. If the amount exceeds 13 million rubles, the term can reach 3 years. In fact, a minor deviation from the legal norms when dealing with cryptocurrencies will be punished with a fine, and a systematic and malicious violation will face criminal liability. The law applies to all owners and users of cryptocurrencies – both individuals and legal entities, company owners and private miners who receive income of more than 600 thousand rubles a year. All this applies to the legitimate receipt of income from cryptocurrencies. What does the legislation provide for persons who illegally conduct transactions on the turnover of cryptocurrency assets? The first thing that can be attributed to illegal circulation is the improper use of cryptocurrencies – for example, as payment for goods or services, which is strictly prohibited in Russia. However, criminal liability for the fact of accepting payments in digital currency is not provided, the violator will get off with a fine, the amount of which depends on the amount of income from illegal transactions, but does not exceed 1 million rubles. Violations of the rules of transactions are also punishable, but also provide only for administrative liability – a fine of up to 2 million rubles. So, we can conclude that in order not to go to jail, you should carefully understand the tax code and in no case avoid paying taxes for cryptocurrency income.