Marcos Zocaro
05/05/2021 11:33 AM
Clarín.com
Economy
Updated 05/05/2021 11:33
The last bitcoin rally made people talk about cryptocurrencies even in the supermarket queue.
Nobody wants to be left out of the phenomenon.
One of the questions that many ask is
what taxes are paid for buying and using cryptocurrencies
in Argentina.
This question is raised even by the accountants themselves, since
the legislation is unclear in this regard.
Faced with this confusing situation, what is the current tax regulation and its gray areas?
If a person bought cryptocurrencies to save and keeps them "saved", will they have to pay the annual Personal Property Tax?
This tax applies to all persons whose taxable assets as of December 31 of each year exceed the general floor of $ 2 million.
They will be encumbered assets, for example, cars or cash.
What about cryptocurrencies?
The Personal Property Tax Law
does not specifically mention them
and, therefore,
the treatment to be applied to the possession of these assets
is not clear from the
legal
text
.
In this way, professional opinion is usually divided into
two positions
: a majority, of those who assert that cryptocurrencies are a taxed financial asset, and another that maintains that they are
exempt intangible assets
(and therefore do not pay this tax).
Now if that same person decides to sell their cryptocurrencies (all or part of them).
Will this sale have to pay any tax?
In the case of Value Added Tax (VAT), the sale of cryptocurrencies
is not reached
.
In other words, VAT will not have to be paid.
And the Income Tax?
Is taxed for the difference between the sale price and the purchase price?
Since 2018,
the Law incorporates as taxed profit the result of the sale of “digital currencies”
.
And, although there are doubts about what should be considered as “digital currency” and if cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin are included in this concept, since 2018 the aliquot that falls on the profits originated in the sale of these assets is
15% for natural persons.
In this particular case, does the person have
to make sales on a regular basis
to be obliged to pay income tax?
No, even if you only make a few sales in the year, and as long as the “annual minimum” is exceeded, you will have to pay the tax.
And
what is that minimum
?
For the year 2020 it was $ 123,861 and for 2021 it amounts to $ 167,678.
That is, if the difference between the amount of cryptocurrency sales and its associated costs and expenses exceeds said minimum, the Income Tax should be taxed.
In addition, you should also pay attention to the Provincial Tax on Gross Income.
Until
today, only Córdoba took particular care to legislate
on the sale of cryptocurrencies.
According to the Cordoba norm, Gross Income must be paid whenever the activity of buying and selling cryptocurrencies is carried out
on a regular basis
in that province.
And to calculate the tax corresponding to this activity, the difference between the sale price and the purchase price must be considered as the tax base, and on that amount apply the aliquot that goes from 4% (reduced rate) to 6.5% (rate general).
Finally, it is important to know that since the end of 2019 there is an
informative regime
that obliges (among others)
local
exchanges
(a kind of exchange house) of cryptocurrencies to
report monthly to the AFIP
about the movements and holdings of their clients.
The Central Bank is also asking financial institutions to report the operations that their clients carry out with local exchanges.
It is not yet known whether any new rule will emerge from that information,
but everything suggests that it will.
Marcos Zocaro is a tax expert, author of the books "Cryptocurrency Manual" and "A Tax Exchange".
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