Legislators in Poland finally introduced a new bill that clarifies crypto taxation policy in the country. Those interested can read the document on the government site here. The bill was published on August 24 and brought to the attention of the community the following day through an explanation by Kryptowaluty.
According to Kryptowaluty, this document is now offered for consultation. The Council Of Ministers will have to review it during 2018 Q3. The taxation policy that is in place at the moment is resisted by the crypto community in Poland. Although taken into account, taxation was changed in the new bill. The government is practically trying to simplify all taxes for the transactions carried out with cryptocurrences.
The most important part of the bill is that cryptocurrencies are defined as being “digital representation of money”. Then, cryptos are divided in 2:
- Cryptocurrency
- Centralized virtual currency
Cryptos would legally be usable as exchange medium, payment mean and in e-commerce transactions.
When looking at taxation, the Polish bill discusses both businesses and individuals. No taxes are going to be applied for the crypto-to-crypto transactions that are performed individually or through the stock exchange. The income that comes from selling property, services and goods with cryptos will be labeled as revenue, leading to appropriate taxation.
Crypto miners are covered, with the bill not charging people that “work for themselves”. Those that work for individuals or entities have to pay taxes.
Poland’s current taxation system is 18% for all annual income that is lower than $23,000. When the amount is over, taxation is 32%.
Poland’s current year started with huge anti-crypto campaigns. During February we saw the Central Bank Of Poland getting involved. It invested $27,000 in content creation against crypto use. That content was broadcasted by the local press and uploaded to YouTube. During May, a highly similar campaign was launched by the KNF (Poland’s Financial Supervision Authority). A total of around $174,000 was used to create social media materials that talked about cryptocurrency risks, Forex trading and pyramid schemes.
As expected, the crypto community in the country did criticize the campaign, together with the new proposed digital currency taxation bill. The initial criticism against the first proposed taxation system made the Finance Ministry roll back measures, leading to working on more convenient regulations. Even so, during June we saw Polish crypto owners publicly criticizing banks as they were denying services for businesses involved in cryptocurrencies and even closing accounts in a highly selective manner.
