A Japanese crypto-tax evader who had already been sentenced for failing to report his taxes is now facing even harsher punishment. According to reports, it was just the beginning of the month of March when the crypto-tax evader had been given his first punishment.
The first punishment consisted of him paying a fine and serving a year in the form of a suspended jail term. However, on March 30, 2021, the suspended jail term has been extended to 3 years instead of 1. Furthermore, the fresh order also suggests that the tax evader must pay around $163,000 as a fine for hiding his cryptocurrency assets from the authorities.
According to further details, the name of the tax evader is Hideji Matsuda, who is a 56-year-old white-collar company employee. In a high-profile case, Matsuda has had another 3 years suspended jail term added to his 1 year suspended jail term.
The order for serving the suspended jail term was passed by the Kanazawa District Court that is based in the Ishikawa Prefecture.
However, it was reported that Hideji Matsuda sought that he would be able to clear his name through the second trial. The local media sources have revealed that the second trial had reportedly been concluded on Tuesday, March 30, 2021.
The local media sources that confirmed the news are NHK, Chunichi as well as a tax law blogger from Japan who had all attended the second trial.
The tax law blogger revealed that the majority of the people that were in the court during the hearing were from Japanese media sources. The reason why the majority of the Japanese media is because the incident has caught the attention of the entire Japan.
As the country continues to make progress in the cryptocurrency sector, the locals are becoming more familiar with cryptocurrencies. The Japanese regulators have imposed taxes on cryptocurrencies starting at the beginning of the year 2021.
However, the Matsuda hearing is the first-ever trial for any person from the cryptocurrency industry facing charges for not being adherent with crypto-tax law and trying to evade taxes.
The Japanese court is now taking strict actions against the individuals or companies that are either failing to file their crypto-taxes or are providing sales information in their crypto-tax firms.
In the first trial, Matsuda had been accused of evading cryptocurrency taxes by showing very minimal earning for Bitcoin (BTC). According to the district court, he did this to evade the taxes that he was legally obligated to pay the Japanese authorities.
However, Matsuda’s lawyer tried to defend his client by claiming that Matsuda found the crypto-tax filing process to be complex. He claimed that the defendant was trying to figure out how he could calculate the figures for his taxes and by that time, the Japanese authorities took the action.
