Tax

The giant Italian bioplastic manufacturer decided to explore blockchain and distributed ledger technology and its potential for its sustainable production. A startup called EarthBi has chosen the blockchain for ensuring characteristics and tracing its manufactured bioplastic products in Italy.

The first quarter (Q1) of 2019 introduced several key legal updates concerning cryptocurrency taxation. Q1 has seen various countries such as Italy, United States (U.S), Japan, Denmark, Poland, Romania, Venezuela, Indonesia, South Africa, India, Chile and others, define tax treatment for cryptocurrencies including Bitcoin (BTC), the top virtual asset by market cap (MC), Ethereum (ETH) and Ripple (XRP).

The cryptocurrency regulatory framework in Italy still has many uncertainties, particularly around tax obligations, in addition to anti-money laundering (AML) and financial transparency onuses and obligations. The Italian tax authorities have offered some indications, but tactlessly they are very far away from convincing.

A recent voting exercise that took place in the town of Innisfil, Canada, resulted into the beginning of a pilot project which allows paying taxes for property using cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, Ethereum, Ripple, Bitcoin Cash, Litecoin and others, and this will work for around 12 months.

Blockchain technology has the capability to offer steadfast, dependable and reliable information in real time to a massive Italian population, creating a system where both taxpayers and tax collectors have equal assurance in the candor of the data gathered. It can be used to combat tax evasion in Italy and other parts of the world.

In an effort to prevent illegal activities that go with blockchain and crypto, Republic of San Marino has come up with a decree aiming at creating strong anti-money laundering regulation (AML) in relation to the distributed ledger technology (DLT), so as to standardize the technology, and further evaluate all potential scenarios in Italy.

The management of digital identity on the blockchain through smart contracts must essentially split the difference with full decentralization - the requirement for sufficient legal assurances of transactions achieved via smart contract doesn’t appear to be able to work without steadfast third parties, particularly when there are tax effects.

Cryptocurrency operations have caught the eye of the Canadian Revenue Agency (CRA), Canada’s primary tax-collecting institution. It has been concerned about risks associated with cryptocurrencies and lawful regulation of taxes in the digital asset field.

Frenchman whistleblower Hervé Falciani, the ex-mole of tax evaders, officially presented his blockchain-based project aiming to fight fraud and money laundering. The former UBS senior system engineer, who published the 'top secret' list of tax evaders that had financial accounts at the branches of the Swiss bank in the 2008 Valencia Polytechnic University bang, went in exile in the city of Madrid, Spain. Falciani became famous as the HSBC former employee.