Amitabh Bachchan pays Rs 1.09 cr GST on NFT sale after tax notice

Bollywood superstar Amitabh Bachchan has paid Goods and Services Tax (GST) of Rs 1.09 crore to the government for the sale of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) worth Rs 7.15 crore in an auction in November last year.

Bachchan had received a notice from the Directorate General of Goods and Services Tax Intelligence (DGGI) regarding payment of dues, Business Standard reported quoting people aware of the matter.

The DGGI is likely to continue its investigation into tax evasion despite Big B depositing the amount, the sources said.

In August 2021, BeyondLife.club, a venture between Rhiti Entertainment Pte. Ltd, Singapore and GuardianLink.io, an NFT ecosystem technology framework, had announced it would roll out Bachchan’s NFT collection on its platform. Bachchan, one of the first actors to endorse NFTs, had entered into a deal with Rhiti Entertainment to convert his content into digital assets.

An NFT is a digital asset representing real world objects such as art, photos, music, videos and other items. This unit of data is stored on a digital ledger called a blockchain, which makes it unique and non-interchangeable.

The most successful auction of Bachchan’s NFTs was recitals of Madhushala, a famous collection of poems written by his father and recorded in his own voice. Apart from this, the NFTs included posters and images.

The NFT auction had garnered Rs 7.15 crore that would attract 18 percent IGST. Big B was liable to pay taxes worth Rs 1.09 crore from the sale, which has been deposited by the actor.

The superstar could not be reached for a comment on the payment of taxes.

After Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman proposed changes in the Income Tax Act, bringing NFTs under its fold as virtual digital assets, tax authorities have started investigations on investors trading in cryptocurrencies and NFTs. A number of Bollywood actors and celebrities like Salman Khan and Manish Malhotra and sportspersons like crickets Zaheer Khan and Rishabh Pant have raked in thousands of dollars by auctioning items on NFT platforms.