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Japan to regulate Bitcoin trades, impose taxes

asia.nikkei.com

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Re: Japan to regulate Bitcoin trades, impose taxes

#11

Post by devindotcom »

So I'm guessing this will work on the retailer/exchange side? Any transaction of guaranteed value (i.e. not just shifting wallets, but something like BTC->goods or BTC->cash) will just have a built-in extra cost in JPY equivalent, if the party gaining money is definitely in Japan?

Sounds great to me, though the volume will be very small to begin with. This is a great opportunity for sites and services to demonstrate legitimacy in the eyes of the law and their users. Of course there will be some dark exchanges and the like for those who'd rather not have a tax record attached to their wallet, but for lots of people this will be very beneficial.

Re: Japan to regulate Bitcoin trades, impose taxes

#12

Post by kaonashi »

Cless wrote: post #2

> Japan's consumption tax, which is set to rise to 8% on April 1 So they're actually going through with this, when the economy has been depressed for over a decade...?

Why do you think their economy has been depressed for over a decade? Every time they show a glimmer of growth, they yank out the rug from underneath by raising taxes.

Re: Japan to regulate Bitcoin trades, impose taxes

#13

Post by corresation »

kaonashi wrote: post #12
Cless wrote: post #2

> Japan's consumption tax, which is set to rise to 8% on April 1 So they're actually going through with this, when the economy has been depressed for over a decade...?

Why do you think their economy has been depressed for over a decade? Every time they show a glimmer of growth, they yank out the rug from underneath by raising taxes.

Why do you think their economy has been depressed for over a decade?

While it is incredibly complex, the fact that their population has been static, trending towards declining, has played a significant part of it.

In many countries, economic growth is just a side effect of population growth -- every number gets bigger, but the actual wealth of each individual person is static or in decline.

Re: Japan to regulate Bitcoin trades, impose taxes

#14

Post by wyager »

gamblor956 wrote: post #4
icu wrote: post #3

IMHO this is a watershed event. It recognizes that Bitcoin has perceived value enough that the regulator is compelled to protect consumers. Never mind how regulation can be gamed internationally, the recognition is so significant I'm going to investigate speculating on Bitcoin's future having kept out so far.

In the US, they regulate penny stocks, and those things are only worth a few pennies. The issue isn't the value of the commodity--it's the potential for avoidable loss due to market manipulation.

>they regulate penny stocks, and those things are only worth a few pennies

You understand that the value of something is not tied to the value of its base unit, right?

If you want to be pedantic, the value of a base unit of Bitcoin is about $.000006.

Re: Japan to regulate Bitcoin trades, impose taxes

#16

Post by icu »

gamblor956 wrote: post #4
icu wrote: post #3

IMHO this is a watershed event. It recognizes that Bitcoin has perceived value enough that the regulator is compelled to protect consumers. Never mind how regulation can be gamed internationally, the recognition is so significant I'm going to investigate speculating on Bitcoin's future having kept out so far.

In the US, they regulate penny stocks, and those things are only worth a few pennies. The issue isn't the value of the commodity--it's the potential for avoidable loss due to market manipulation.

Hi, I respectfully disagree with your comment that the issue here is the potential for avoidable loss.

Loss of value is the counterfactual to value, or to put it another way, you cannot worry about avoiding losses until you have something to lose.

The regulator has therefore sent a signal to the market that Bitcoins have value by the virtue of the very regulation it will use to protect consumers from the loss of Bitcoins.

My point is that not all market signals carry equal weight and a market signal given by a regulator is significant.

Re: Japan to regulate Bitcoin trades, impose taxes

#17

Post by thrush »

MattyRad wrote: post #5

Is anyone else skeptical of the government's ability to effectively tax bitcoin? The scale of doing so both technologically and physically seems far too complicated for such a minute market.

Legitimate companies are definitely susceptible to being taxed as they are supposed to report certain parts of their financials. The average consumer will likely be affected by this tax by an increase in the BTC prices they are paying for goods.

This could be strategic to prevent illegitimate companies from using BTC because if they are not paying taxes properly, the government has motivation to investigate the company. Honestly, I think this is probably a good thing because it will make it hard for companies dealing in illegal services to operate (although only slightly).

A concern I have is whether taxing transactions will make it more difficult to make quick and easy transactions on the internet (one of things that makes bitcoin so great).

And, I am also a little skeptical because it will be really hard to enforce even for legitimate companies. I think that if the government wants to support cryptocurrency, and tax it at the same time, then they're going to have create their own cryptocurreny protocol. I almost reckon that they'd need a system where the blockchain was hidden from outsiders (basically, transactions would not be anonymous to the government, and users wouldn't be able to publicly see transactions aside from confirmations from the government).

Re: Japan to regulate Bitcoin trades, impose taxes

#18

Post by celticninja »

dangrossman wrote: post #10
MattyRad wrote: post #5

Is anyone else skeptical of the government's ability to effectively tax bitcoin? The scale of doing so both technologically and physically seems far too complicated for such a minute market.

It doesn't need to be any more sophisticated than the taxing of every other asset that gets traded. When you realize a gain or loss from buying or selling gold bars, train engines or copy machines you're expected to report that. If you make a lot of money buying and selling Bitcoin, you're probably going through exchanges that are licensed and can be subpoenaed for records if your own are in question. If you are acce…

plenty of options to take BTC without the need for a 3rd party payment processor, that will ultimately require honest traders to report accurately, not much difference to how a cash business works now e.g pub, restaurant, builder etc.

Re: Japan to regulate Bitcoin trades, impose taxes

#19

Post by gnaritas »

MattyRad wrote: post #5

Is anyone else skeptical of the government's ability to effectively tax bitcoin? The scale of doing so both technologically and physically seems far too complicated for such a minute market.

Where does this idea come from that Bitcoin is somehow special from every other taxable commodity and is somehow harder to tax?

They don't tax Bitcoin, they tax you, and you can evade taxes in any currency or commodity if you're extremely careful and not very risk averse.

Barter is taxable, yard sales are taxable; people don't report them because it's too small to get noticed but if you're making a killing doing it, you're going to get caught.

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