Bollywood megastar and Indian icon ponies up tax on NFT sale

Please fol­low and like us:
Pin Share

Bol­ly­wood super­star and Indi­an icon Amitabh Bachchan report­ed­ly paid over US$130,700 (about 10 mil­lion Indi­an rupees) in goods and ser­vices tax (GST) toward the sale of non-fun­gi­ble tokens (NFTs) in Novem­ber of last year, accord­ing to local media reports.

Bachchan’s NFTs, which are avail­able on the beyondlife.club plat­form, report­ed­ly sold for about US$966,000 in an auc­tion orga­nized by Beyondlife, a ven­ture between Rhi­ti Enter­tain­ment and GuardianLink.io, and would attract 18% GST. 

The col­lec­tion includ­ed the ‘Mad­husha­la’ NFT col­lec­tion, nar­ra­tions by the actor of the poems writ­ten by his father Hari­vansh Rai Bachchan, and vin­tage posters fea­tur­ing sev­en auto­graphed posters, among others.

See relat­ed arti­cle: Indi­an media giant’s Ful­ly Fal­too NFTs sell out in 48 hours

India’s tax author­i­ties began inves­ti­ga­tions and sent out tax eva­sion notices to investors trad­ing in cryp­tocur­ren­cies and NFTs, after Finance Min­is­ter Nir­mala Sithara­man pro­posed changes to the Income Tax Act, bring­ing NFTs under its fold as vir­tu­al dig­i­tal assets. 

An email seek­ing response from Indi­an tax author­i­ties out­side of local office hours was not answered at the time of pub­li­ca­tion. An email sent to Bachchan’s pub­lic rela­tions firm went unanswered.

This is not the first time Bachchan finds him­self in the crosshairs of the tax depart­ment. In 2010, he declared his pro­fes­sion as that of a farmer when pur­chas­ing land in his home state of Uttar Pradesh, to com­ply with local laws requir­ing a change in the use of the land for cul­ti­va­tion. Agri­cul­tur­ists do not need to pay tax on farm-based income.

Sev­er­al Bol­ly­wood actors and celebri­ties includ­ing Salman Khan and Man­ish Mal­ho­tra and sportsper­sons Zaheer Khan and Rishabh Pant have invest­ed in the NFT mar­ket­place, hop­ing to crack gold by auc­tion­ing items on NFT platforms.

Source link

Please fol­low and like us:
Pin Share

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *