Bitcoin Forum

The local media inform that Romania has made amendments to tax laws, approving a 10% tax on the profits from the investments in cryptocurrency.
Read more: https://www.xmlgold.eu/en/news/article/798/romania-tax-cryptocurrency-trading/ (https://www.xmlgold.eu/en/news/article/798/romania-tax-cryptocurrency-trading/)

Is it just trading or possession? I mean what if someone sells a product and gets crypto in return? Do we know what happens to those people? Are they not taxed? Are they taxed the same way they would if they sold it for fiat currency? What about the freelancers? They do not even sell anything, they provide a service and they get paid?

It is great that countries are making laws for crypto, it makes the crypto world a lot more legit however we need the laws to be more precise and more comprehensive, this just concludes one part of the crypto world which is trading but it leaves out a bunch of other stuff unanswered and without that people could be taking advantage of these things. Looking at the USA example the countries that tax the trading depend on the exchanges and the information they give but it takes just one bad exchange to make the trust go away.

Well, there are users who use cryptocurrencies not only for trading. In this way it isn't that possible to predict the trade volume or the transacted volume of an user without the support of the exchanges. USA has got the data from the exchanges and levy taxes according to the data. Another thing, there are more exchanges that let us to do trade anonymously.

It's an income tax and it's for when one sells crypto for money.

It doesn't matter you bought one Bitcoin for 20000$ or for 1$, if you sell it they want 10% of the money you received (preev tells now 3438$) as tax.
I don't expect many individuals will do this; it's just one more of the stupid laws my country started to get in the last 2 years at an accelerated rate.

How are they able to monitor profits ?
For example, investor trades on Binance and then exchange crypto on fiat at localbitcoins. How government will control it?
As to legit payments and transactions, on the one hand it is an advantage that Romania accepts crypto and Blockchain technology. On the other hand, they limit traders and investors. What do you think about it?

They would collaborate with such organizations, of course. The governments always have the power to seek records even on private institutions if they so do wish, provided that they have given the rights to do so. I wouldn't be surprised if Romanian cryptoexchanges add this to their ToS after the approval of the 10% tax on profits from trading. This is bound to happen on other countries too, perhaps not on capital gains but on other aspects they see bitcoin and crypto being taxed.

Paying income tax to something which are in already heavy loss will hurts more. :-[

But I don't think anyone will pay their right amount of tax to the governements because even they can't the fiat transaction exactly then it is going to be a heavy load for them to track so people filing the taxes will get accepted as it is right?

Again, the government in haste enacts laws. How are they going to control it? Such an opportunity, as I understand it, no. Or will they force exchangers to cooperate?

Perhaps on local exchangers there will be an automatic commission withdrawal. Who knows how they implement it. But the government will not just leave the money.

This is interesting news, thanks! Compared to other countries that already imposed taxes on cryptos, this rate is relatively low (if, of course, there are no additional VAT or capital gains taxes). At the same time, though, I like the progressive income tax systems more. Take Singapore, for instance. If your annual personal income is less than $20k, your income tax is at 0%! If you earn the hell lot, though, you have to pay way more than 10%, but I think it's completely fair. My country hasn't decided on taxation of cryptos yet, but if my annual profit is, say, $3k in btc, then paying $300 is a really significant part of it, while if one's income is $20k, I don't think that those $2k matter in the same way.

The taxes reports are basically based on trust. You report your income and they believe you are not lying. They have several ways to control it, like they can control your salaries. But once they figure out you cheated be sure they won't forget you.
Some banks accounts owned by exchanges are well known, more countries are also using big data

These guys are smart, anyone who nuys now is going to make massive gains in the next two years from the bitcoin halving and etfs. If they don't tax it, they will miss out on millions in capital gains

Well, if you look at the potential profit that can be obtained from trading cryptocurrencies in this market, the official 10% income tax - I think a very good solution.
Earning 100% of $ 1000 to give the government $ 100 is not so expensive, but you can live in peace and not worry that you will come!.

Probably will restrict exchange usage slowly. Might force people to use only their local exchange. Will add some KYC bullshits to keep track of the users activity and impose the required taxes. In other words, they will just start to put in as much regulations possible to keep everything under the eyes of the government.

10% tax on profits is actually quite light, in my country its 33%
as taxes go 10% is reasonable.
Possession of crypto cannot be taxed, not on a decentralised
currency.

I read it differently. It says in the article that


Which means that you'd only get taxed if you do make a profit on your bitcoin in comparison to when you bought it initially.

If you do make a loss then it won't count as taxable, from what I can gather from the article above. In certain countries you might even be able to claim that as a deduction, but not sure about Romania.

That isn't actually too bad compared to a lot of countries worldwide where CGT is a lot higher. Though, I'm not sure if Romania will have special rules in regards to the use of bitcoin as a currency to buy goods (i.e. if you use bitcoins you bought a while back to buy something online when bitcoin has risen, will that also be taxable?) or not.

10% of taxation on capital gains it's not that high. In my country, it's much higher. You pay that tax and then you are free to legally convert your gains in fiat and use your money as you want, while we wait to use directly bitcoin as a currency to buy goods and services in the future. It's not that bad.

The tax implementation of crypto currencies with this method is indeed quite good because it is only applied to those who gain profits above $ 50 , but I think before the government implemented this the government must be able to increase the interest of the community to trade in this commodity because the application of taxes is not there will be a maximum of only a few people investing and trading on the market.

I think the 10% tax is not big, and later we also feel the benefits of the tax. because taxes are used to build the country. but to see crypto as a global currency, I think it still needs a long journey

At least this is recognition by the Romanian government that crypto or anything related to crypto is here to stay so they might as well tax them for revenue purposes.

Yeah, 10% for you is not that big. As compare to other state crypto backup currencies such as crypto rubble who have been reported to be tax by more than 30% if I'm not mistaken.

So it's a fair trade and I'm sure Romanian crypto enthusiast will be happy of these developments.

Are you sure about that?

It doesn't look very logical but I'm not from Romania, so I don't know and that's why I'm asking. Typically, if it is an income tax, you pay it on income earned, not on money received. Well, technically, you may in fact have to pay it on money received but at the same time you can file a tax deduction form proving that your income is actually the difference between the price at which you sold your coins and the price at which you bought them. In this manner, you may be inadvertently missing the part about the tax deduction

It was quite a fuzz about it last month. I've read it in many papers directly in Romanian.

In the previous years crypto didn't exist in the papers. It was counted in the "other gains" group. So you you got any gains (sell > buy) you had to pay tax on those gains.
But starting with 2019 is has change and you pay tax on the money you receive for the crypto, no matter how much did you pay for it. At least that was what the papers I've read were writing.

Is there a Tax Code in Romania or anything to that tune?

I don't know what kind of papers you actually read, but I guess you should be looking in the local tax law as the primary source of authentic information on such questions. It would take me a few minutes to find the relevant part on the income tax to see what tax deductions are applicable to what types of income tax and thus remove any doubts regarding this issue. In simple terms, you may have been misinformed

Sure, but it doesn't seem to be up to date (or I don't know where to look) at the official IRS-equivalent organization's site: https://static.anaf.ro/static/10/Anaf/legislatie/Cod_fiscal_norme_22012019.htm
At the newspaper they got the final draft here https://media.hotnews.ro/media_server1/document-2018-12-13-22864735-0-amendamente-admise-respinse-pdf.pdf

And the important area is:

Google translate:

But how exactly is this gross income defined?

And it is still income, not money received. Income can be synonymous with profit (as well as revenue, which is not synonymous with profit), so we should look further into how income is defined exactly. Further, as I wrote in one of my previous posts here, we should also look into the income tax deductions part of the Code, which may specifically mention the condition according to which you can legitimately reduce your taxable income for the expenses incurred (so-called tax deductible expenses)

Sorry, but in 30 minute of searching I couldn't find anything useful as written down "paper" on this.
Maybe somebody with more contact with the financial laws can help on this.

Same applies in all countries around the world. The "tax" you pay are different in two, one is tax usually paid by the buyer but sometimes the seller in difference countries where if a product is 100 dollars either the buyer or the seller also pays a tax on that, for example in my country its 8% and that is the tax on the product. However there is also the tax shop pays which means they made some income but they also had expenses and when you take out the expenses from the income whatever is left you pay taxes.

Now this looks like 10% tax on profits of trading which should be regarding buying and selling bitcoin however if a person sells stuff for bitcoin and shows expenses for that product and rent and all other expenses then they will pay a smaller amount than the trader who just has one expense which is buying and one income which is selling.

They needed it for them to survive on the possible crisis. But how they can find the real profit you’ve got from cryptomarket? Well, this is still a good move from Romania and this mean that they really support cryptocurrency which is good for us, I hope they will succeed to collect taxes for them to grow economically.

Good for their government to find ways to track the owner of those cryptocurrency investments. It would be hard to trace the owner of those investments because of the anonymity the crypto brings.

Yeah.. the tax on income is also 10% so it is somewhat logical to pay that tax for profits coming from trading cryptocurrencies. Until now the tax was in the "grey" area, some specialists said that you need to pay them, some said the opposite. At least now everything is clear from a legal point.

its more like what we have in my country, a "capital gains tax"
tax is due on the profit you make, it could also be seen as an
"income" tax but income is technically the wrong word to use.

either way its a very low tax.

I don't really think it is a misnomer (sort of)

Whenever I see that word (income), it is what it is supposed to mean according to common use (or dictionary), i.e. what you receive as wages, salary, money you procure from selling, say, real estate, securities or from currency exchange operations. In other words, it is not profit, as simple as it gets. And the income tax (which is also a correct term here) is calculated on this amount specifically, even though this income is not the same as profit (i.e. it also includes your expenses which should be taken out)

And this is where things get interesting (or complicated if you please) as many tax codes in many cases allow you to reduce your taxable amount by the expenses you made to obtain this income. For example, in case of securities this will be the money you paid for them (i.e. price multiplied by quantity), so you actually end up paying what is commonly understood as profit. And if you think of it, that makes sense as it allows the tax authorities to see what your profit is actually made of (i.e. income minus expenses)

You can control it by introducing the KYC procedure on the exchange.If taxes are introduced then cryptocurrency turnover control is introduced.I already want to see how it will all happen in fact.After all,if the model of collecting taxes on cryptocurrencies in Romania will work, then they will be followed by other countries.

This is defenlitly some fantastic news, i honestly people think that taxing crypto is bad but it is actually good for the industry it self, because if you have something that is regulated and has a law tied to it , actually attracts more investors and more people into the market, because they will be working in an environment where they know that they are not doing something illegal, because one of the biggest things that is holding the crypto down is the government and if we see the government showing interested in it, we will see more people getting into it.

As an addition:
A new article has come online, with explanations and indeed, it looks like that after all we talk only about the profit. (so I was wrong).
(The link is here, but it's in Romanian: https://www.hotnews.ro/stiri-specialisti_deloitte-22958662-criptomonedele-prima-reglementare-specifica-din-legislatia-nationala-prin-codul-fiscal.htm )

Something more, especially for the ones telling that 10% is low. If the income is more than ~5000 Euro one has to also pay more 10% for the compulsory health insurance.

So, considering that I exchange my cryptocurrency for fiat in a local Bitcoin ATM, which takes a fee of 9%, I will have to pay 9% to the ATM plus 10% to the government as a tax for my trading activity?
This is kind of insane to me. I think it is too much to pay 10%. They should have a more decreased rate in order to make it viable. I hope that other countries that want to follow this direction to use a rate of 3-5%.

the first time I read the OP post I thought that 10% was too high for a tax.
but if you read a few replies the posts from other members were higher than that. I was very surprised by that.
Please understand my ignorance, but in my country, Bitcoin has not received permission or regulation from the government.

So be it then. In general, governments may not be interested in levying too high taxes on activities that are highly susceptible to tax evasion (unless you are some dictator, of course). If they levy too high a tax like 10% on the received monies, that will only cause unnecessary tensions in the society. And with that they will be obliged to prosecute such behaviors which may make people revolt against the government in the end

And we all know how that can turn out in Romania

I think that is were the whole argument is.  Are they supposed to tax bitcoin when we used it as money? If bitcoin is used for the purchase of goods and services and a government is Tax cryptocurrencies for it that government is treating crypto as stocks or commodities and not currencies.

This is of course interesting news. But I can not understand how they are going to fulfill this law. I mean, how are they going to withdraw 10%. Will it be shared at the level of exchangers or what?

It's good to see that Governments are coming forward to use crypto, making laws too. A question in my mind, How Govt gonna detect all the crypto users if they never went to the bank? How they will monitor every transaction in their country?

Its great, and there will be more of it in the future. Some countries are open for new technologies and in my opinion countries that accept cryptocurrencies before others will have more benefits in the future from that, something like early adopters have more benefits over everyone else here. They don`t need to monitor every transaction, they just monitor exchanges and the people who did KYC, but you still can be off the grid if you want that,

Still it is impossible to analyze the exact statistics of crypto users in their country because cryptos also can be bought from P2P in that case there will be no recorded data on crypto holdings and some exchanges have KYC for less limit and if people using that exchange everyday to hide themselves from taxation.