Polish bill seeks to clarify tax regime on crypto activities

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Polish lawmakers have drafted a bill that will classify procedures in filing taxes related to cryptocurrency transactions. The amendments to the country’s tax laws will be discussed before being adopted by the Council of Ministers within the third quarter of 2018, news.bitcoin.com first reported.

The bill states that trading of cryptocurrencies for other cryptocurrencies will not be taxed. Fiat proceeds from the sale of cryptocurrencies, on the other hand, will be taxed as individual or corporate income. The sale of cryptocurrency-related equipment and other property will be subject to capital gains tax.

The bill also outlines the way mining for digital currencies to be taxed. If coins are mined as a service to other entities, the tax will be on the professional fee charged for the service. But if the mined cryptocurrency is kept by the miner as their property, they will pay a tax only upon selling of the cryptocurrency.

The drafting of a framework for taxing in the cryptocurrency industry is a significant step away from the Polish government’s prior antagonism towards such businesses. The Finance ministry had previously regarded cryptocurrencies as covered by the country’s Civil Law Transactions Tax, which meant a tax on every cryptocurrency sale, even at a loss.

The Polish central bank, in coordination with the Polish Financial Supervision Authority, admitted last February to have spent about $25,000 in taxpayers’ money for a smear campaign through YouTube and Facebook against cryptocurrencies. Last May, Polish cryptocurrency exchange BitBay moved its operations to Malta, after local banks refused to deal with them.

Each country has reacted differently to cryptocurrencies’ disruption of their financial and other sectors, with many treating money made from cryptocurrencies as capital gains. In France, the capital gains tax rate was lowered last April, from 45% to 19%. Meanwhile, in South Korea, lawmakers are proposing to remove cryptocurrency exchanges from their classification as small and medium enterprises where they currently enjoy a 50%-100% cut in taxes for their first five years of operation. The bill for this is to be presented to the South Korean National Assembly on August 31.

Note: Tokens on the Bitcoin Core (segwit) Chain are Referred to as BTC coins. Bitcoin Cash (BCH) is today the only Bitcoin implementation that follows Satoshi Nakamoto’s original whitepaper for Peer to Peer Electronic Cash. Bitcoin BCH is the only major public blockchain that maintains the original vision for Bitcoin as fast, frictionless, electronic cash.