Indian Income Tax Department Is to Send Notice to Bitcoin Traders

The Indian Income Tax Department is set to issue notices to around 400,000 high net worth individuals who were trading the unregulated virtual currency across the country. The Income Tax Department surveyed some major cryptocurrency exchanges across the country on December 13 and sent notices to those Bitcoin traders.

The survey helped the Income Tax Department to collect information about those who were trading significant numbers of Bitcoin and is planning to send notices to traders and investors regarding it. Bitcoin and other virtual currencies are currently neither legal nor illegal in India and it is still an unregulated area.

The survey was conducted last week under section 133 A of the Income Tax Act, “gathering evidence for establishing the identity of investors and traders, the transaction undertaken by them, identity of counter-parties, related bank accounts used, among others,” they said.

It is to be noted that Bitcoin and other virtual currencies have seen a huge surge in past few weeks and it has definitely gathered attention of governments across the world. Many countries are looking to regulate the virtual currency space and bring proper structure and form to it.