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Jared Schutz Polis, the Governor of Colorado recently announced plans to accept cryptocurrency for tax payments by the end of the summer. The state is currently hosting the 2022 ETHDenver conference.
Accepting Tax Payments in Crypto
Appearing in an interview with CNBC on Tuesday, Colorado Governor Jared Polis stated that the American state will soon accept tax payments in cryptocurrency by the middle of the year. In addition, residents can also pay for other state-related fees such as paying for their driver’s license in Bitcoin (BTC).
“We expect by this summer pretty soon to accept crypto for all of our state tax-related purposes. Then we plan to roll that out across all of state government for things like, could be as simple as driver’s license or hunting license within a few months after that,” Polis stated.
The Governor of Colorado also highlighted that the state would immediately convert the cryptocurrencies into U.S. dollars, with the help of a third-party intermediary to accommodate its current accounting standards. The Governor said,
“All of our expenses are in dollars, our budget is approved by legislators in dollars, so when we talk about accepting crypto for payments, they would be converted back into dollars for our purposes,”
Jared Polish has long been a Bitcoin advocate. In 2014, he became the first politician in the US to accept Bitcoin donations for his election campaign.
The United States of Crypto
Colorado is not the first state in America to allow its residents to pay taxes in cryptocurrency. In 2018, Ohio allowed companies to pay state-level corporate taxes. The program, however, ended a year later after only 10 companies used it to file their taxes. Wyoming and Arizona are also looking to pass similar legislation for crypto tax. For instance, a proposed bill in Arizona is seeking to amend its state legislation to include Bitcoin as a legal tender to pay for “debts, public charges, taxes and dues.” Wyoming is also on the verge of passing a bill that proposes accepting cryptocurrency for “sales and use taxes” rather than income tax.