Bitcoin Forum

Rhythm BlockBeats news, Japan's national tax authorities are stepping up their tax audit operations on crypto assets, according to the Nihon Keizai Shimbun. According to sources, a massive tax audit of individuals in Japan's Kanto and other regions has been conducted, with dozens of people noted to have missed out on a total of around ¥1.4 billion in tax returns. The report said that cryptocurrency investments by companies and individuals are all the rage and 'tax-saving measures' that wander into grey areas of the law are spreading, and Japan's national tax authorities will continue to focus on investigating such cases.

Per Forum rules, needs link(s) to source otherwise is just unsubstantiated FUD.

It might you're referring to this source. 
https://www.theblockbeats.com/en/flash/50684

Of course, they can apply tax for those who are willing to pay their taxes but for those who want to remain anonymous, there's nothing they can do about that.  IMO, this could be lead to have a decision of having a legal tender of Bitcoin in Japan just to apply tax for individuals or by the companies who adopted Bitcoin.

The big question in my mind is, how can they inspect all crypto assets if crypto holders can hide or mask their identity while holding crypto.

If I'm not mistaken, I've heard news that crypto exchanges in Japan had conceded about $95 million more which at that time made Japan to carry out an audit plan for every crypto transaction as a continuation to identify large transactions used by thieves. This is a form of strong reprimand so that Japan will no longer concede the umpteenth time. Because after all so far Japan has given space to crypto. It might not be good enough when the amount of supervision makes users feel more cared for every time they make a transaction. But if this is made so that in the future crypto transactions in Japan will be more optimal and overall. After all, crypto thieves are a threat that will damage the reputation of transactions.

In fact, all these news bring a lot of good news for Bitcoin. Bitcoin transactions will increase further if Japan starts using virtual currencies to pay taxes.The bitcoin market will grow even more. I think if different countries take such a step then of course they will improve a lot and Bitcoin will improve a lot.

So the tax revenue from cryptocurrencies didn't match the forecast of the government and some senior officials from Tax department has to save their own jobs. That's how it all starts!

I remember we all cheered when Japan as the first country legalized cryptocurrencies. Later the excitement was gone looking at the tax rate which is highest in the world. And now with this crackdown, Japan government is going against their own decisions. Sad governance!

Yes, the OP should include the reference link so we know what he's talking about is news and not just a rumor.
As the government wouldn't know the full picture of crypto transactions of their citizens, it is left to the fact that those who are willing will only give all their crypto involvements.
Because we all know that you can always hide some of your crypto transactions by using alts that are designed for privacy.
For me, it is a better step to have regulations rather than totally banning the usage of it.
At least, the government can get a share from crypto-related activities rather than not getting at all.

This is where most of the governments are going. At first, many of them don't like actually cryptocurrencies, Japan is excluded as they've been known as a crypto friendly country. As they see that there's a volume of money that gets on it where they can tax people through tracking users that are registered on the exchanges that are operating on their country. With Japan's tax implementation, I'm sure that majority of their citizens will have no complains about it as they're known to be obedient and honest.

If more and more people switched to using virtual currencies. This useless Governments of ours would have no choice but welcome the currencies or risk collapsing because the power belongs to the masses.

What we shall see over time is a softening of Government stance on Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies where we won't be hearing about crypto bans, and instead they will be recognized as alternative avenues people use to transact and grow wealth through investment and trading.

Governments all over the world are looking for ways to get more money out of the people and businesses in general, but they are doing so after the pandemic left everyone in a bad shape so they are having trouble doing this, and as such they look at their market and think of all the profits they could get if they could regulate it to their liking, so I think we are bound to see more of this all around the world, but it is very difficult they will obtain a lot of benefits out of this as a great deal of the whales are just holders and even under their own rules most likely their profits are exempt of taxes.

Also, it's just the global pressure, not to mention that South Korea recently made some moves to go against its citizens living and conducting crypto business outside its borders.

Of course government wallets are getting empty and the only way to fill it up again, as it always has been, is to collect more tax.

No state is happy if people are doing commerce and not paying up their taxes!

If they know or were able to track those 1.4 billion in taxes are pending then how are they not able to recover it from those peeps anyways?
As far as I know Japan was one of the country who legalised the bitcoin use including its OTC applications and beyond. I am not sure how they ended up in the tax debts like this. May be they did not see this through, like heavy usage of the BTC, peeps hiding the money in virtual form and what not.

I believe at some point peeps should be thinking about this. At least businesses should be considering paying their taxes. This will help the government as well as the Japanese to keep the legalisation of bitcoin alive in their country!

I mean there is one of part of world which still struggles the acceptance of BTC while here is Japan now, taking it all on the roots. Big penalties on their way I guess!!

Eventually every tax will be collected one way or another, that is how the governments work, you either bribe them to not pay taxes which is "tax" in the sense that you pay the government money to shut up about it, well the politicians at least, or you pay the regular tax. The only difference for us is the fact that one of them will actually be going towards us hopefully, yet even in that situation things that costs 1 dollar costs 10 dollars in government so that politicians could get rich.

This is how it is in my nation, I have no idea how it is in Japan but I assume not incredibly different I suppose. Japan is a very high end developed big nation, yet they still have these kinds of problems which shows us that they had no idea how to collect these taxes, no idea how to find them, hence it should have been known beforehand what they were planning to do before they let people be freely doing it.

If you read the news you know that it's not about paying taxes with crypto but rather all the crypto holder will be taxed, Japan government realized many institutions or individual has change their investment to crypto. It's just a matter of time all country will taxed crypto, and countries crypto friendly will the first to crypto taxed.

If that is what they are actually trying to do then I wish them good luck because they are going to need it, just a few days ago the Pandora papers appeared and it showed what the rich and powerful do to try to avoid paying the taxes they are due, someone that has enough bitcoin holdings can do the same or just move out of the country with his fortune and the governments have no way to block or confiscate that money, something that drives them crazy and it is why they do not like bitcoin.

That's part of their security and for the safety of people's money, we can't stop regulations got into this situation. In different parts of the world it became a very serious situation, which we felt so bad if they scrutinize us on our private transactions. There's nothing we can do about but blend with the system that's kept on raging towards cryptocurrency.

Thats gonna be tough actually but if they can sort out details from exchange or centralized ones like Binance and others, they could extract some info about it. But those that are outside these realms maybe considered aa ghost unless they will inspect each one gadgets or PC at home personally to see if he did have accounts or so.