{"id":38722,"date":"2021-03-11T13:34:26","date_gmt":"2021-03-11T11:34:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/?p=38722"},"modified":"2025-08-30T06:05:23","modified_gmt":"2025-08-30T03:05:23","slug":"japanese-court-has-for-the-first-time-imprisoned-a-bitcoin-holder-for-tax-evasion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/japanese-court-has-for-the-first-time-imprisoned-a-bitcoin-holder-for-tax-evasion\/","title":{"rendered":"Japanese court has, for the first time, imprisoned a Bitcoin holder for tax evasion"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A 56-year-old resident of the Japanese city of Komatsu, Hideji Matsuda, has been sentenced to one year in prison and a fine of 22 million yen (over $202,000) for concealing income from cryptocurrency transactions. The case marks the first such ruling in the country&#8217;s jurisprudence, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.chunichi.co.jp\/article\/215359\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">local media reported<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>According to the indictment, in the 2017-2018 tax returns Matsuda deliberately understated income earned from cryptocurrency trading. In total, he owed the state about 74 million yen (over $680,000) in taxes.<\/p>\n<p>In his defence, the accused cited ignorance of cryptocurrency taxation law.<\/p>\n<p>On March 9, the Kanazawa District Court found Hideji Matsuda guilty of data falsification.<\/p>\n<p>In Japan, cryptocurrencies <a href=\"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/news\/oecd-studies-bitcoin-taxation-in-50-countries\">are recognised as a legal means of payment and are taxed.<\/a> The tax rate is progressive and, in some cases, can reach 55%.<\/p>\n<p>Earlier, some politicians agreed that tax rates on cryptocurrency transactions were \u201ctoo high\u201d and urged the government of Japan to review them.<\/p>\n<p>Subscribe to ForkLog&#8217;s news on <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/ForkLog\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Twitter<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A 56-year-old resident of Komatsu, Hideji Matsuda, was sentenced to one year in prison and a fine of 22 million yen (over $202,000) for concealing income from cryptocurrency trading. The case marks the first such ruling in the country&#8217;s jurisprudence, local media reported.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":38723,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"select":"1","news_style_id":"1","cryptorium_level":"","_short_excerpt_text":"","creation_source":"","_metatest_mainpost_news_update":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[1162,135,558],"class_list":["post-38722","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-and-analysis","tag-court-cases","tag-japan","tag-taxes"],"aioseo_notices":[],"amp_enabled":true,"views":"35","promo_type":"1","layout_type":"1","short_excerpt":"","is_update":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38722","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38722"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38722\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38724,"href":"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38722\/revisions\/38724"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/38723"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38722"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38722"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38722"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}