For a long time, the cryptocurrency industry has been in the shadows in the vast expanses of Russia, but for almost six months now, the law on the regulation of this financial sphere at the legislative level has come into force. Experts, who, in one way or another, are connected with the crypto industry, believe that it prohibits more than it regulates. This opinion is justified by the fact that cryptocurrency cannot be paid for goods and services, cryptocurrency is not equated to money in principle, and the tax legislation is quite strict with respect to the owners of cryptocurrencies and persons who receive income from them.
The fact that the cryptocurrency cannot be on a par with the national currency, it was said back in 2018, when the draft law was still under discussion. At the moment, users can only dispose of cryptocurrency as property. The sale and purchase of digital currency is allowed, so the exchangers operate on the territory of Russia quite legally. Users can also work with exchanges and trading terminals.
The regulation of the cryptocurrency industry is mostly reflected in the tax system. Taxation applies to the receipt of income from cryptocurrencies in a certain amount. At the same time, it does not matter how the holder of the digital currency uses the cryptocurrency to make a profit – invests in it, sells his/her own savings (exchanges them for fiat money) or trades in the exchange terminal on the difference of cryptocurrencies.
Violation in the field of tax law will be punished with a fine or even imprisonment. In the early version of the bill, incomes from cryptocurrency exceeding 100 thousand rubles were subject to declaration, today the threshold has been raised to 600 thousand.
There are always unscrupulous citizens who want to avoid taxation or hide their true income from the tax service, but if they are found to have submitted false information in the declaration or failed to pay tax, violators face punishment depending on the seriousness of the crime. If the offense is one-time and the information is not very different from the real ones, the cryptocurrency trader will receive a penalty of a percentage of the income. Otherwise, a criminal case will be initiated and you can get a prison sentence for concealing cryptocurrency profits. The law also defines the deadline for submitting a declaration of income from cryptocurrency – until April 30. This period is valid for at least 2021, as the legislation may be amended in the future.
In general, the regulation of the crypto industry in Russia consists of the following provisions:
- permission to conduct transactions with cryptocurrency and receive income from the turnover of digital currencies;
- prohibition on the use of cryptocurrencies as a means of payment;
- licensing of companies that provide cryptocurrency exchange services (the license is issued in agreement with the Central Bank);
- the possibility of banning investments to individuals (the Central Bank of the Russian Federation may arbitrarily, based on its own considerations, prohibit some investors from buying and exchanging cryptocurrency);
- restrictions on the issuance of their own cryptocurrency (tokens can only be issued by legal entities that have received the appropriate permission);
- the need to enter cryptocurrency income in the declaration (with the provision of extracts from cryptocurrency wallets);
- non-declaration of profits from cryptocurrency turnover entails administrative responsibility, and systematic tax evasion – criminal responsibility.
Penalties for regulating the crypto industry are set at 40% of the amount of tax that was not paid, or 10% of the amount of profit for violating the rules for conducting cryptocurrency transactions and intentionally submitting false information.