Bitcoin Forum

Regarding the taxation of Bitcoin, I would like to know your views.

I think that the development trend of Bitcoin is unstoppable. It took only ten years for Bitcoin to have a significant impact on the world. Gradually, Bitcoin will gradually enter the supervision of the government. If Bitcoin is regarded as a kind of currency, it will affect the original legal currency of the country. However, if Bitcoin is used as an investment commodity, it is bound to face a problem— -tax.

I would like to ask how other countries currently tax Bitcoin. In my understanding, it is difficult to find if Bitcoin is converted into legal currency. In China, we transfer cryptocurrency to others through Binance, and at the same time receive transfers from other people's bank cards. In the view of Bank of China, it is just a simple transfer transaction. If Bitcoin's hash address is one-to-one correspondence with the person, then Bitcoin loses its anonymity. This puzzles me. Taxation and anonymity seem to be opposed.

In my country the gains are calculated between the moment you bought Bitcoin and you sold it or purchased anything with it.


It depends. A lot. If you convert at a centralized exchange, you provide your details (KYC, card details at buying, bank details at withdraw fiat, ID when you made Binance card, ...) and it depends if the exchange sends those details to your govt or not, and it depends even more if your govt asks for those details.
If you exchange anonymously, P2P, in cash, then yes, you can elude law. In the rest of cases, you have the chance to be caught for misreporting/not reporting the gains.
I don't say that this is easy endeavor for the agencies, but it can be done.


It may worth mentioning that Bitcoin is pseudo-anonymous. This means that the funds on your address and all the transactions made with it are publicly available. If somebody (an exchange) links that address to your person, anonymity is lost.

Bitcoin has been having significant impact since it was created in 2009, but only those that hold it knew this at the time.

How? Even most people still convert Bitcoin to fiat for daily spendings, and when using p2p, people also interchange fiat and Bitcoin, I do not see how this is a problem. People that are core Bitcoin users still do not have options than to make use of fiat for so many reasons. So, how will fiat be affected when people are still making use of it for daily purposes?

Yes, but most people are using exchanges and custodial means to buy cryptocurrencies, this should not be a problem. Also there are many fiat based businesses evading taxes.

Most countries are not yet taxing Bitcoin and crypto investment in general for now, but there would be amendment in the future. I think taxing cryptocurrencies investment in US has been effective. The taxing is just like normal taxation, but the taxing can differ from one country to another.

Do not forget Binance can track your capital gain, they can comply with the law of a country, and people to report their capital gain and pay their tax.

You are right, anything custodial makes Bitcoin not to be pseudonymous. Bitcoin is not anonymous but pseudonymous.

Yes. But people do not care about the pseudonymity, that is why trading volume on decentralized exchanges are not much compared to centralized exchanges. Even most people that are using decentralized exchanges first bought cryptocurrencies from centralized services.

The rates differ per country but it's usually treated as part of Capital Gains. For some countries who don't have a specific law, I would assume that they would consider income derived from trading/investing/mining BTC as part of ordinary income subject to regular income tax.

This was kinda true when KYC on exchanges and custodial services wasn't a thing. Today, almost every centralized platforms that you deal with would ask for your information. That means it became easier to identify people who converts their BTC for fiat. Another thing is that almost everyone uses these exchanges. There are only a few people who trades in real P2P and DEX.


I'm not sure how this puzzles you. You decide to trade on an exchange that collects your email address and identification and you still expect to be anonymous?

By the way, BTC isn't an anonymous coin to begin with. It's pseudonymous. You can try to hide your identity as the owner of an address but you cannot hide your transactions unless you use mixers/coinjoin and avoid centralized exchanges/services.

It looks that way because you have to declare the sources if you want to declare all your income (including crypto).

This kind of discussion is already present on Bitcointalk.
Already in 2012, here, in Defend Taxation (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=98890), taxation was described as extortion.
Furthermore, Is taxation theft? (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1732082.new#new) debate already has 1351 replies.

This thread topic is how is taxation possible and its relationship with the so much wanted anonymity.
So please don't derail it, there are places you can express that opinion about taxation. And keep in mind that I don't disagree with your opinion.

Taxation of Bitcoin is a normal thing, and the level of taxation of Bitcoin is a symbol of the country's attitude towards Bitcoin. This is a very obvious thing. It is very smart to control Bitcoin by controlling the level of taxation.

I think it is difficult to calculate crypto taxes, one thing that is impossible if there is a crypto tax,
and basically crypto is anonymous, how does the state know who will or who owns bitcoin / crypto
the government will also cheat in this case the common people will be asked for crypto taxes while , they will pay crypto taxes or not  / if they have crypto assets

It's not impossible or difficult if there is already a law in place.

It's not anonymous (read the first 3 comments).

They can extract information from the centralized exchanges/services you used and submitted personal information. Never underestimate the capacity of the state. They can go further/deeper than what I already said.

What the government does with our taxes isn't an excuse for evading payment. If that looks unfair to you, blame the legislators who craft these laws. Anyway, that's beside the point. Let's stick to the main topic.

There are still some countries that seems to be okay with bitcoin but don't have much regulation towards taxation. But for those countries that you have mentioned, they're becoming strict towards bitcoin and strengthening the policies that they've made because they see that it's an emerging market and there are a lot of citizens of theirs that are earning from it. Having that said, they cannot ignore the potential that they can take advantage of it through taxation. As long as you're living in a country that's very fine with bitcoin transactions and don't seem to be strict with it, I think you're living in alike paradise because you can move freely but declaration of profits/gains are voluntarily done.

In fact, I think that if Bitcoin is to pay taxes, it means that it has lost its greatest feature of decentralization. If one day, Bitcoin can pay taxes, then Bitcoin will no longer be Bitcoin.

My country is still in the setting stage. The rising price of bitcoin and its users is the reason for the huge income from Crypto taxes. Since taxes are the main source of state income, they are too serious about big money flows.

Meanwhile, for now, tax reporting is still limited to how we report it as income tax. So we can include or not include it. But I'm afraid that if this is done right then I'm a little doubtful how it works. If it is true that the exchange is cooperating with the government, then I think there will be vulnerabilities regarding confidentiality.

You are right, if countries dare to levy taxes then I think they should dare to give flexibility to Bitcoin transactions. Don't just want the money, but the rules are tightened and there are many restrictions. This is tantamount to the state taking it forcibly without protection. In my country it is true that crypto is not completely legal and cannot be substituted for payment. But my country has regulated crypto as just an asset.

In my country tax on Bitcoin is implimented on the profit I make, its called Capital Gains Tax.
As long as we use banks and exchanges that insist on AML and KYC regulation our
anonymity is surrendered. Buying Bitcoin and selling it again with the FIAT then transferred
to a bank account means the whole transaction is traceable and liable for some form
of taxation depending on a countries rules.

Taxation can only make the price of Bitcoin higher. Taxation means that the country officially recognizes that the benefits of Bitcoin are legitimate rights and interests. Since paying taxes in accordance with the law, the country has an obligation to protect. :)

Beginning in 2017, tax authorities began to take this unprecedented income seriously. At this point, you'd better make sure that you do everything related to tax filing right. It is now in the tax season in the United States, and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) will not let go of this part of the income they deserve.

I don't think so because the taxes should only be applied if you are going to sell it meaning that the prices are going to go down when there is taxes and probably the prices will go down much more since buying bitcoin might get taxed too.

Here we use a third-party app to cash out BTC to paper money and aside from the conversion fees that are gonna be involved, we're getting taxed when we cash it out from certain remittance center that are near us.
When you use a third-party app, you had lost your pseudonymity, not anonymity, because most likely you're gonna need to undergo KYC verification.
Government won't let you just net out hundreds or thousands of cash.

It's quite hard to imagine how bitcoin taxes, how can it be calculated and how it is formulated or converted into something like fiat specially it is decentralized and has unpredictable value unlike other asset or money they can do so but in the crypto really difficult to think and process.But the thing is crypto has it own way of existing it and making it useful and transferable.

Bitcoin should be taxed,because Bitcoin should be treated the same way any other financial asset is being treated by the tax authorities.We have to face the truth-Bitcoin is a financial asset,rather than a currency.
If you want to know how other countries are taxing Bitcoin,just do a research.Don't ask questions on a forum.
Bitcoin isn't anonymous.BTC mixers can make it anonymous(but only if the Bitcoin mixing service is reliable).
 

Countries that have that type of ruling towards cryptocurrencies is a good country and their citizens don't have to worry about hiding to the government or feeling bad about the governance because of it. It is fine if the government of a country only sees bitcoin as an asset because that's what we've been looking at it. As long as they're allowing people to trade and use it freely, there's not that much to think of it because of its decentralization should be against what the government is advocating but instead, it's allowed.

In my country, there's no legislation regarding Bitcoin yet, so it's not treated in any way for tax purposes. I've heard of some people registering their BTC holdings as a commodity and paying a 20% tax on it, and then not using it. Most people just do whatever they want with their cryptos and don't pay taxes because there's no procedure that would allow to do that. As MPs have to file electronic declarations and mention their assets, income, savings and property, some have declared owning BTC. And the authority on preventing corruption and investigating tax evasion said that they aren't interested in cryptos in this regard, so for now paying no taxes on cryptos is fine.

If bitcoin is considered money, it is not taxed, but tax is charged on the value of goods.
For example, Goods are taxed by 5%, the number of bitcoins traded with goods increases by 5%.
If Bitcoins are considered commodities, they will be taxed in the currency used to purchase Bitcoins.
For example, 1Bitcoin is taxed at 5% then Bitcoin buyers will have to pay 5% more of the FIAT used to buy Bitcoin.
I think the above explanation will help you to understand how the goods tax with Bitcoin is calculated. There is probably no country in the world that charges a goods tax with Bitcoin, they only see Bitcoin as a currency if it is used.

Well whether it should be taxed or not depends on what it is to a country... for example with El Salvador recognizing bitcoin as legal tender, it means that gains in bitcoin will not be taxed (although this could change with further legislation in the future). In countries like the US where bitcoin is recognized as an asset class (property in the case of US), one has to pay short-term (less than one year) or long-term (more than one year) capital gains taxes depending on how long bitcoin was held before being sold.

Of course it's a good thing if a country makes rules related to Bitcoin, because the government is planning to legalize crypto.
It doesn't matter the government only allows using Bitcoin only as a digital asset, and has not allowed it to be used as a means of payment.
Because it is necessary for the government to gradually accept Bitcoin, we sometimes have to be wise about government decisions.
The most important thing is that we can use Bitcoin without feeling afraid because of government restrictions. In my own country
the government doesn't allow using Bitcoin as payment, and I don't have a problem with that. Rather than a country that banned Bitcoin,
I think it's a country that is too closed to technological developments. Whereas the state can benefit if it legalizes Bitcoin by imposing taxes,
and that's the thing to do in my opinion.

Crypto is supposed to be anonymous, how does the state know who will or who owns crypto