Australia Moves to Remove ‘Double Taxation’ on Digital Currency
For a month starting May 3, The Treasury of the Australian government will be accepting submissions from interested parties to comment on a newly-released discussion paper entitled ‘GST treatment of digital currency’ as part of the 2016-17 Budget. The Treasury says the government has realized that consumers are ‘double taxed’ when using digital currency to purchase anything already subject to GST – Goods and Services Tax. It added that this treatment may be preventing the use of digital currencies and hindering their further development. Jennifer Dudley-Nicholson, National technology....
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The Australian Treasurer and the FinTech Advisory Group met on Friday to further discuss the development of innovation in the financial services sector. Among topics focused on were blockchain technology and ending the double tax for digital currencies, including bitcoin. Some Progress Made. The meeting discussed various FinTech topics, including a....
The Australian Government announced in its report entitled “Backing Australia's Fintech” that the current double tax law on digital currencies including Bitcoin is soon to be reformed. Digital currencies such as Bitcoin were in 2014 established by the Australian Taxation Office (ATO) as intangible assets for goods and services tax purposes. Thus, payments involving bitcoin have been considered as a form of barter rather than conventional transactions. However, the major issue with the GST law on digital currencies is that Australian residents who purchase items or goods using bitcoin are....
Following a policy statement by the Australian Government Treasury in March that saw the authority reveal that digital currencies such as Bitcoin are likely to be exempt from double taxation via the Goods and Services (GST) tax, the Australian Government has kept its word. The Australian Government’s Budget 2016-17 has listed its intention to remove the double taxation levied on digital currencies like Bitcoin. An excerpt from a summary of the 2016-17 Budget that focused on Jobs and Growth, released today, read: The Government has released a consultation paper on changing the GST treatment....
The Australian government has announced that it will back a legislative solution to tax concerns surrounding bitcoin as part of a broad policy statement on financial technology. Under current tax guidance in the country, bitcoin is considered a form of barter rather than a form of money. Australian businesses must pay goods-and-services tax (GST) if they sell digital currencies, and can be liable for the tax should they receive them as payment. This policy has sparked criticism from the startup community in Australia, who argue it creates an unfair tax environment. Last summer, the....
The monetary authority in Australia is beginning research into the potential economic benefits of issuing a central bank digital currency. Within the project, the regulator hopes to identify use cases and intends to develop a limited-scale pilot. Central Bank of Australia Working on Digital Currency Program The Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) announced the launch of a research program to explore the benefits of issuing a central bank digital currency (CBDC) for the country’s economy. The project, expected to take about a year, will be realized together with the Digital Finance....