FTS demanded from investors a report on income from the sale of cryptocurrencies

The interest of Russians in investing in cryptocurrencies has fueled attention to them from tax officials. Izvestia reports with reference to data from consulting and legal companies KPMG, PwC, FTL Advisers, Borenius, as well as information from the Center for Strategic Research (CSR).

“We observe that Russian residents have begun to voluntarily reflect income from transactions with digital assets (mainly with cryptocurrency) in tax returns”, - the publication quotes the publication as saying of the partner of FTL Advisers Maria Kukla.

According to experts, the trend towards voluntary declaration of income from cryptocurrencies will only intensify in the near future. This is due to the fact that regulation of the cryptocurrency market around the world is tightening.

As experts note, when buying or selling conditional bitcoin, traces inevitably remain. Any non-cash transactions with money are recorded in the history of the organizations that conduct them. The FTS recently gained access to banking information of Russians. Now tax authorities can get information about financial transactions even when they are performed abroad: automatic data exchange has existed for more than a year.

The tax authorities have already begun to use the data received through the exchange systems for fiscal purposes: tax departments are actively sending “letters of happiness” to individuals. In them, FTS employees notify citizens that the state is aware of the financial transactions of clients in other countries on the basis of the law on the automatic exchange of information with foreign jurisdictions.

Receiving such letters pushes Russians to voluntarily declare cryptocurrency, without waiting for the time when the Federal Tax Service finds out about it and imposes penalties for hiding income from taxation.