It was recently announced that the Spanish Ministry of Finance (Hacienda) is going to oversee 15,000 unique taxpayers that were identified as making crypto transactions in the past year. The news was reported by El Pais, a large Spanish newspaper.
Agencia Estatal de Administracion Tributaria (AEAT), the tax agency of Spain, showcased the fact that it is going to monitor fiscal incidence of the new technologies, like cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology. The reason why this is going to happen is that tax fraud actions try to be prevented. The measure is taken as a part of the tax control plan.
ONIF (National Fraud Investigation Office) investigated numerous banks, intermediaries and companies that operated in the country of Spain. After the investigation, 15,000 taxpayers were selected to be inspected.
AEAT is going to monitor what the taxpayers do in order to see if they declared capital gains and benefits appearing from operations done. The agency is going to investigate the use of the digital currency with attention being put on money laundering procedures. According to the above mentioned article:
The use of cryptocurrencies, such as Bitcoins, as payment means, is one of the most demanding challenges today. In order to face this threat, the use by the tax agency’s research units of the new information collection and analysis technologies in all types of networks will be enhanced.
Earlier this autumn, the government approved a special draft law that forces investors to reveal virtual currency holdings for tax purposes.
In the month of May we also saw the Spanish Congress showing its support for regulating cryptocurrencies. This was referred to be done through a controlled testing environment. It seems this testing environment just started, with a focus being placed on tax fraud prevention.
