An analytical note for the government, citing data from the Coinmarketcap platform, states that the average capitalization of the global cryptocurrency market in 2021 was $1.87 trillion, of which at least 12% belong to holders from Russia.
Even with a simplified taxation system, the amount of taxes collected in Russia is estimated by the authorities at up to a trillion rubles a year. This is reported by The Bell, which received access to the document.
Analysts-authors of the note divide the taxes that can be collected from the crypto market into two types:
- percentage of income from investments in cryptocurrencies (up to 606 billion rubles per year);
- taxation of legal entities, that is, exchanges and intermediaries (from 90 to 180 billion rubles a year).
On January 20, the Central Bank proposed to ban the issue and circulation of cryptocurrency in Russia, as well as to punish its use as a means of payment. This news caused a lot of controversies.
The Ministry of Finance actually disagreed with the Central Bank and presented a different concept for regulating cryptocurrencies, proposing that legal transactions be carried out through the banking infrastructure, that banks receive the status of “organizers of the digital currency exchange system” and that crypto exchanges and exchanges register in a special register of the Central Bank.
Other relevant departments, Rosfinmonitoring, the Ministry of Economic Development, opposed the initiative of the Central Bank. The Federal Tax Service announced that the department “advocates that the channels for the movement of crypto assets are transparent.”
Vladimir Putin did not take sides in this dispute. The President considered that the Central Bank “does not stand in the way of technical progress”, noted the advantages “in the so-called mining”, and also asked the government and the Central Bank to come to a consensus “in the near future”.
