Bitcoin Forum

At least as far as EU court thinks

http://www.cnbc.com/2015/10/22/reuters-america-bitcoin-currency-exchange-not-liable-for-vat-taxes-top-eu-court.html

as i think before,not just a virtual currency

You didn't open the link did you?

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This is great. It was about time that someone did something right. Good job EU.

In my opinion, Bitcoin is some kind of property, because it can be exchanged to any currencies, by this mean, Bitcoin is some kind of property instead of currency.

A sensible decision by the ECJ! Hopefully will pave the way for other jurisdictions to reach the same conclusions


And you can't exchange one fiat currency to any another currency? ???

The same can be said about US dollars etc etc.

Just about right, actually. Good thing that the ECJ finally come up with a concrete explanation why bitcoin shouldn't be subjected to consumption taxes. :)


I can change my currency to USD without a hassle anytime, too.

Bitcoin is many things. First of all a powerful technology, than also a currency, commodity and who knows for what else will people be using it and what applications will be able to be developed on the top of the Bitcoin blockchain.

Very nice decision for Bitcoin indeed. Once again it is confirmed that EU is the softest toward the Bitcoin of all of the parts of the world. Hope others will follow.

well, is not EU who should tell you what is money and whats not, is the people who decide whats is money and whats not.

ofc that bitcoin is money, you just need two people who accept it as a change.

btw besides it, thats a good news, things are going in a good way.

Basically every that people would want to exchange for other things is money. Bitcoin however is virtual and cannot be physically regulated by the government and are very hard to trace the transactions.
But I don't understand how the government would regulate it and take taxes from every person...

Well you can Andreas if it is or isn't money. He has been living on Bitcoin for a while now. Member here called Elwar I think, it's also somehow living off Bitcoin. If you get paid in Bitcoin I guess it's really cool and convenient, not so much if you have to buy it. If you have to buy it, you tend to give it a use of more like gold, something you want to hoard, while you keep using fiat for groceries and whatnot.
PS: I still don't understand how taxes with BTC work.

Well ofcourse it is. Bitcoin being a virtual currency has a high value when converted to fiat or real money. My thought is if something has a value that works just like how fiat works it is money.

It's like back when on the ancient times where you use items to do trades, then comes the coins created to trade, until today to the fiat we use to exchange services and other stuffs, we are heading to the part where we use a virtualcoin to trade. :D

Well, I think they made the right decision. I mean for me any decision of a court which makes holders of Bitcoin feel better is right. )

Good to hear that. The EU seems to have taken the right decision.
The question is why would Swedish tax authorities want to impose VAT on it?

According to the Financial Times, the ECJ said that bitcoin transactions "are exempt from VAT under the provision concerning transactions
relating to currency, bank notes and coins used as legal tender."

So it is money.

IRS view bitcoin as a property yet they tax it and it isn't exempt from vat there

i'm lucky that i'm in euro, this is definitely a good news for us, for this alone bitcoin should grow better here

Hip Hip Hurray,no more 23% vat taxfor btc in my country,maybe now merchant what  accept btc will appear
great news

Does bitcoin attract vat in the US or just as a kind of income and you have to pay tax on it?

no, it is a commodity. i want some blockshares!

Afaik, they tax it by capital gains in most parts of the US.

Yea, in the US they tax it as a commodity and for that reason capital gains is applicable. I like the EU stance on Bitcoin, because it acknowledge it as a currency.

I think the EU just want to move closer to a cashless society and Bitcoin is the enabler for that move towards 100% digital fiat.

We know Bitcoin can be used as a investment entity and also a currency, and this makes the decision open to interpretation of it's use case.  ::)

Im not sure about this. I always have second thoughts about governments being nice to Bitcoin. Sure it's a great thing, but at the same time, I think "What are they gaining from this to be honest?". Wouldn't they prefer to have their own crypto coin and not Bitcoin which is open source and decenetralized and gives people actual never seen before economic freedom?
I wonder what will happen in the following years, its really exciting.

If each government has its currency, they need a common currency as a exchange medium or as a reserve currency. That's bitcoin.

Great our highest court accepts it.

It is to stay in the UK.


I feel it is more of a posession than a Crueency. If it is treated as a possession then it cannot be taxed!

Noone can tax you on a "non money trade"

True, you can say that about a lot of stuff.  I personally see it as money because you can use it to purchase a lot of different goods and materials.  I don't understand how you can't think it is currency/money at all.

If i give you my car you will have to pay taxes....no money whatsoever included. Same if i trade my car with you for something of lesser value. You pay taxex for car etc. paying tax is not definite factor for definition of currency. And even with BTC state CAN tax you (for ideas how use google).

So basicly tax or not, it doesnt matter. What matters is that ppl are ready to use it for exchange of value.

It's a natural result. It states clearly in swedish law that capital goods are exempt from value added tax

Value added tax is very different from capital gain tax, it is impossible to apply value added tax to any kind of financial transactions due to that most of the financial transactions are making just a couple of percent profit/loss at maximum

The purpose of VAT is to tax the end consumer who benefited from the consumption of products/services, while not touch the manufacturer and retailer. But for financial products there is no end consumer, because financial products will never be consumed, they just change hands again and again

Hmm...  I am not sure if VAT is only to tax the end-consumer. In typical manufacturing of a product, suppliers at each stage pay a small incremental tax on the "value added". If a house is built, VAT is paid on each stage of the supply chain.

The end user pays most of the VAT. The middle pay VAT and can claim that back when they sell the goods. It buys $1 goods, and pay $0.2 vat. If he sell that for $2, he charges the buyer $0.4 VAT and claim back $0.2. The net vat payment is $0.2 for the middle man. The end user pay $0.4 in total. In this example, the government collects $0.6 vat.

Possibly it is a step towards fuller regulation of European crypto-currency exchanges.

How do you think it positions the European exchanges versus these from US and Asia ?

I'd definitely say that the position in Europe was better than the one in the US. Regulation is good, but too tight regulation is worse than no regulation at all. We all know what happened with the NY licensing rules and such. At the moment, the EU has made a great ruling where they're indirectly confirmed that Bitcoin is a currency.

It's time to talk to those merchants in person and make sure that they are aware of this.

Do you mean possession as property? If it is so, then when you sell bitcoin, you have to pay capital gain tax. If bitcoin is a currency, then there is no tax to pay at all. Bitcoin is currency to me, I use it to buy goods. I hold bitcoin not as a property, just as a saving to be used in the future.

tax guidelines do not make something money.

Of course not. This is all a ploy by the government officials involved to try and pull the veil over the public and then try and regulate it at a later time to squeeze out as much as they can out of it. They will try and milk it as much as they can one way or another.

Well seeing as you can trade bitcoins in for let's say US dollars or Euro's it is a type of money

Bitcoin is a currency which you can trade

I just hope that they will never apply taxes to the bitcoin like all the other currencies

That's the right way to put it. Bitcoin's a virtual currency and should be exempt from any form of tax. Some countries are considering to categorize it as a commodity which could make it taxable. EU has taken the right initiative adding Bitcoin as a form of legal tender and a form of payment involving notes and coins.

At least in Europe, bitcoin is regarded as currency so no VAT is applicable. But in the US, it is regarded as a commodity or property, so capital gain tax is applicable. Maybe as time goes on, bitcoin is more used as a currency, the US will change its stance and recognize it as a currency. This will give a big boost.

Your definition is so wrong on so many levels. But to the point: so you would rather have bitcoin classified as a commodity instead of money and tax every single bitcoin transaction with VAT?
It would kill the whole idea of cryptocurrency.

By your mean, bitcoin can be exchanged into any currencies, so it is a kind of property. US dollar can also be exchanged in Euro, should this also be a property? All currencies are property? Yes, they are. But they have a unique feature (property). You can use the currency to exchange or buy goods. You can use bitcoin to buy goods, so it is a currency.