Despite the law “On Mining”, which came into force in November last year, most enterprises and citizens continue to mine digital assets in Russia without registration.
Deputy Finance Minister Ivan Chebeskov stated that only 30% of crypto miners have registered with the Federal Tax Service. Accordingly, 70% of them remain in the shadows and do not pay tax with a progressive rate of 13-22% of the income received, depending on the amount of earnings.
According to the current legislation, all institutions and individuals who mine digital assets on equipment that consumes 6,000 kilowatt-hours of electricity per month are required to register in the miners’ registry. According to Chebeskov, officials will make efforts to «whitewash» miners, so it can be assumed that Russians who are hiding from paying taxes and underground enterprises will be identified by high electricity consumption.
Ivan Chebeskov
In order to facilitate the legalization of crypto miners, employees of the Ministry of Digital Development proposed to amend the Code of Administrative Offenses, according to which individuals will be fined up to 200,000 rubles for illegal mining of bitcoins, ethereums and other coins, and legal entities — up to 2 million. In addition, violators are going to have their earned cryptocurrency confiscated. It is not yet known when these measures will come into effect.