India’s tax authorities have demanded that Binance pay $86 million in damages

Earlier, the exchange had already paid $2,3 million to India’s financial intelligence agency for repeatedly violating AML laws

06.08.2024 - 15:25

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What’s new? The world’s largest centralized crypto exchange (CEX) Binance is facing a demand from the Indian Revenue Service to pay $86 million. Last week, officials at the Ahmedabad-based authority issued a notice to this effect due to suspected tax law violations. It is alleged that the exchange failed to pay taxes on the fees it charged customers from July 2017 to March 2024.

Material by CoinDesk

What else is known? This is the first case when such a notice was issued by the tax authorities in relation to a foreign crypto exchange. In turn, Binance representatives assured that they cooperate with officials.

At the same time, it is not the first time that Binance has faced problems in the Indian market. Thus, in June this year, it was fined $2,3 million for providing services to Indian clients without complying with anti-money laundering (AML) rules. As part of its re-entry into the market, Binance paid the fine and registered with the Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU).

The current investigation by the IRS is being conducted independently of the FIU.

IRS notices of this nature do not always result in the payment of penalties. For instance, earlier this month, local company Infosys managed to challenge such a demand and got some of the charges dropped.

Binance user number has passed the 210 million mark

In addition, the number of institutional registrations grew by more than 36% in the first half of the year

According to preliminary reports, Binance earned more than $476 million 40 billion rupees) in transaction fees that were transferred to Nest Services, part of the Seychelles-based Binance Group.

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