It is being reported that the tax authority in Spain, Agencia Estatal de Administración Tributaria, is actively monitoring the bitcoin space to ensure that the digital currency isn’t being used for crimes like money laundering, drug trafficking, and tax evasion.
This is according to a report from RTVE, who notes that news comes as direct response to socialist Treasury spokesman in Congress, Mr. Pedro Saura.
Saura was reportedly curious as to which tax rules applied to the acquisition and use of bitcoin (and other digital currencies), and whether or not the Spanish government had any plans for legislation to prevent the above-mentioned crimes.
The tax authority offered confirmation that one of their deparments, the National Bureau of Fraud Investigation, is actively monitoring the landscape “if its release would jeopardize respect of tax control or used in schemes of money laundering or other illicit purposes.”
And speaking of taxes, here’s something interesting:
Digital currencies in Spain are likely to be treated as cash and not as a commodity. Compare that to the view of bitcoin and other crypto-currencies in the eyes of the Internal Revenue Service, who says that for federal tax purposes, bitcoins shall be classified as property.
Officials say that there is a rule that cash transactions in which any party is an employer or profession cannot transact in amounts greater than 2,500 euros (or the equivalent in another currency).
This rule says that “any other physical means, including electronic, designed to be used as payment to the carrier” is cash, and therefore bitcoin fits the definition.
As such, an official said that “in the case of the monetary and financial authorities consider that the bitcoin electronic means intended to be used as payment to the carrier, the limitations would apply to cash payments.”
[textmarker color=”C24000″]Source(s)[/textmarker] RTVE, CoinDesk