An Indian tax authority has reportedly issued tax notices to a number of cryptocurrency traders following a nationwide survey of cryptocurrency exchanges. In an interview with Reuters, tax official in India revealed that the citizens in the country took part in more than $3.5 billion in transactions and investments in cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, Ethereum and Ripple over a 17-month period.

In 2018, there must be some regulative around this, the tax authority thinks. In fact, the Indian tax has already surveyed the transactions and gathered evidence establishing the identity of investors and traders as well as the transactions undertaken by them.

At the time, the IT (income tax) department confirmed its intention to collect taxes from investors. With this, the Indian government’s tax authority has reportedly sent notices to “tens of thousands” citizens linked with cryptocurrency investing. According to reports, they are now ‘seeking details of their total holdings and the source of funds’.

As the tax authority said:

““We found that investors were not reflecting it on their tax returns and in many cases, the investment was not accounted for,”

Currently, India’s official stance on cryptocurrencies remains unclear in a space that saw significant growth towards the end of 2017 and is seeing big potential in 2018 too. It is too early to see if there will be bans to some of the exchanges on the market in India.

The Indian government is going through an inter-departmental committee and working on developing a framework that will ensure these cryptocurrencies haven’t been used in criminal activity, considering that they are ‘here to stay’. As the officials said:

“We cannot turn a blind eye. It would have been disastrous to wait until the final verdict was out on its legality,”