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Australia Promises To Remove Tax On Bitcoin, Support FinTech Innovation (thestack.com)

Posted by timothy on from the best-practices-in-tax-farming dept.

An anonymous reader writes: The Australian government has announced that Bitcoin and other digital currencies would no longer be subject to Goods and Services Tax, and regulations would become more lenient to support startups and entrepreneurs in the country. Treasurer Scott Morrison noted in a detailed policy statement that various new law proposals would see GST removed on Bitcoin, restrictions and tax barriers eased for venture capital investors, and a stronger focus on crowdfunding and peer-to-peer lending. The release detailed that reform in the area is crucial to 'assist Australia becoming a leading market for FinTech innovation in Asia.'

31 comments

  1. More stupidity by BarbaraHudson · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Bitcoin is not money. China controls the majority of bitcoin mining. This is not smart.

    --
    "Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
    1. Re:More stupidity by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      No less money then any of the rest of the fiat monopoly money people slave away for.

    2. Re:More stupidity by codebonobo · · Score: 1

      Miners play a singular role among others in controlling the network. While mining centralization is a somewhat valid concern there is good evidence this trend will reverse itself and the fears are often overblown because Full nodes, exchanges, developers, and merchants all share responsibilities and power over the miners. Bitcoin represents the longest Valid proof of work chain where only economic full nodes determine what is valid and what isn't thus the users running full nodes hold the ultimate power and the miners are serving them.

    3. Re:More stupidity by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Don't get all pessimistic especially if you're an Australian. You have a good idea? need funding? Just submit a grant proposal. You dont need any real skills just the ability to bullshit on paper and then you'll be given a huge sum of money to roll around in. Fail and then ask for another large some of money.

      Actually let me rephrase that. Australia is desperate as hell. The mining boom is over. The tech industry is 5 years behind. The only thing propping up Australia is Tourism. While Agriculture is sold to China before our very eyes. Australia needs to find _something_ to cling too. Because telling the world how great we because we come up with WiFi is starting to get stale and the "we also came up with ...." simply doesn't exist. Maybe before WiFi it was clotheslines or something back in the 50s.

      I've written software for 15 years. Web services for 10 years. Including sophisticated technologies for the likes of the Australian Govt. I'm in the process of moving overseas in a months time with absolutely no plans to return. Good luck guys, the IT industry in AU is set to implode and I will not be around when it happens.

    4. Re:More stupidity by PopeRatzo · · Score: 2

      No less money then any of the rest of the fiat monopoly money people slave away for.

      You don't know what a fiat currency is, do you?

      --
      You are welcome on my lawn.
    5. Re:More stupidity by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Currency can be anything long as the majority trust its value. It could be Justin Bieber's teeth; just imagine the joy of withdrawing cash from The Bank of Bieber. Instead of a pen you get a pair of brass knuckles; instead of thumbprint ink there will be a bucket of glue and crushed glass.

    6. Re:More stupidity by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Thank you for showing deep understanding when surrounded by hubris.

    7. Re:More stupidity by codebonobo · · Score: 2

      You are correct that we shouldn't conflate the two. Fiat money is a currency established by state decree and insured by the social contract imposed without agreement upon unborn taxpayers. Bitcoin isn't insured by the unborn tax payers within a geographic region but an international currency insured by the user base who voluntarily adopt it and can choose to leave or fork the currency into their own at any given moment. The two are radically different.

    8. Re:More stupidity by ixuzus · · Score: 1

      If I had a hand in creating some of the web services the Australian government uses I would definitely be fleeing the country too.

    9. Re:More stupidity by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Pretty much everything you build has to be according to their specification. And let me tell you. The processes are usually great. The concepts and planning are insurmountable to corporate. But... yes sadly 90% of what gets pumped out is absolute shite. Therefore you defiantly have a point which I cannot disagree with ...

      On another note. I also wrote software for the automotive industry. How safe do you feel now :D

  2. stolen by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    must be fun to be a journalist and copy-paste news articles from Australia's ABC on your site and pose as a legitimate journalism, can we have the source of these copy-paste hack jobs articles instead? please mods....

    1. Re:stolen by Ol+Olsoc · · Score: 1

      must be fun to be a journalist and copy-paste news articles from Australia's ABC on your site and pose as a legitimate journalism, can we have the source of these copy-paste hack jobs articles instead? please mods....

      Ummm, that's how this slashdot thing works. You gotta be a first timer.

      --
      The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
    2. Re:stolen by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I'm pretty sure he's not so much griping about Slashdot being a news aggregation, but that Slashdot sources its news from other aggregators. In an ideal model, each aggregator would make their own copy-paste hack job article from the original article, but with a comment about what other aggregator the local "editors" saw the story in before making their take on it.

      It's news aggregation all the way down...

      (mildly related, typing "aggregator" or variants so many times in a single reply has me now visualizing irate toothy reptiles)

    3. Re:stolen by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Interesting question though. If a slashdot submitter sees a story on another aggregator and submits it to slashdot, would it be morally correct to cut out that source aggregator and link back to the original story? Surely if the story was found on another aggregator, that aggregator deserves to be linked to, doesn't it?

      (mildly related, I see what you mean)

    4. Re:stolen by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      What do you mean, "deserves"? They copied it themselves too.

      I don't mind if you whole the whole "via" chain, but I too would prefer to have the main link be to the original source, and perhaps the earliest one, or (and, while at it) the one closest to the actual source, when there are multiple. But that would require more than merely hitting "publish", which is still just about all the "editors" do here.

      The only contentual thing that changed with the new new ownership seems to be a different set of "anonymous"ly submitted feeder aggregators, with a rather stronger sensationalist-and-vapid slant. In one sense it saves me even more time than before because there's even less to be gleaned from reading more than the clickbait-y headline. It speeds up my day, it does, yes sir indeed.

  3. Digital currency by Errol+backfiring · · Score: 1

    Aren't most of the currencies digital today? You are almost automatically seen as a terrorist if you pay with normal cash nowadays.

    --
    Nae king! Nae laird! Nae yurrupiean pressedent! We willna be fooled again!
    1. Re:Digital currency by smooth+wombat · · Score: 1

      When I whip out the greenbacks I'm not, as far as I know, treated as a terrorist. Everyone gladly accepts them as payment for the goods or services I am purchasing. Nor have I ever been stopped in or outside the store by anyone from the government questioning why I'm using cash.

      However, I'm sure comments I've made about the gaping holes in TSA "security" have put me on a watch list somewhere so in that regard I am a terrorist because I dared to exercise my First Amendment rights.

      --
      We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
    2. Re:Digital currency by codebonobo · · Score: 1

      When I whip out the greenbacks I'm not, as far as I know, treated as a terrorist. Everyone gladly accepts them as payment for the goods or services I am purchasing. Nor have I ever been stopped in or outside the store by anyone from the government questioning why I'm using cash.

      You will be treated like a terrorist, money laundering criminal or drug dealer if you are seen with as little as a couple thousand in greenbacks. Not only will you be unfairly profiled, but you will become guilty without trial while your cash is stolen from you until you can hire a lawyer to potentially reclaim it.

      http://ij.org/report/policing-for-profit/

      http://dailycaller.com/2015/01/30/the-7-most-egregious-examples-of-civil-asset-forfeiture/

      Cash is great, and the USD still has certain advantages over bitcoin(stability as a unit of account), but I would be much more comfortable carring around encrypted private keys to my bitcoins at a traffic stop or across state line than greenbacks

    3. Re:Digital currency by smooth+wombat · · Score: 1

      at a traffic stop

      The solution then is to not get stopped by the police. Remember what The Transporter said:

      Transportation is a precise business.

      Don't speed down the road in a car with a broken tail light. As The Transporter also said:

      I always say, the way a man treats his car is how he treats himself.

      Considering I recently took a 3,500 mile round trip vacation across the middle of the country, I had no problems with not getting stopped. I could have been carrying thousands of greenbacks or anything else and no one would have known.

      --
      We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
    4. Re:Digital currency by Opportunist · · Score: 0

      Well, maybe because you're a good, god-fearing US boy, aren'tcha? The damn tourist who I was got asked whether he might have a credit card to pay for the gum and other trinkets (worth 5 bucks) because it was so fishy that I tried to pay that unreasonable amount in cash.

      --
      We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
    5. Re:Digital currency by codebonobo · · Score: 1

      Well, I agree that obeying the traffic laws , having a properly maintained vehicle, avoiding driving a really old car or a really expensive new car with certain characteristics like aftermarket rims. Additionally , it doesn't help to be racially profiled either, which is not an option for many. These are techniques to simply reduce the probability of having your money stolen through asset-forfeiture by not getting caught in the first place with large amounts of cash. This does nothing to remove the possibility that you will be treated like a terrorist or drug dealer if they do find large amounts of cash on you however. It would be interesting to study the data and see when they typically steal the money and what variables play into their decision.

    6. Re:Digital currency by godel_56 · · Score: 1

      at a traffic stop
      The solution then is to not get stopped by the police. Remember what The Transporter said:
      Transportation is a precise business.
      Don't speed down the road in a car with a broken tail light. As The Transporter also said:
      I always say, the way a man treats his car is how he treats himself.

      Considering I recently took a 3,500 mile round trip vacation across the middle of the country, I had no problems with not getting stopped. I could have been carrying thousands of greenbacks or anything else and no one would have known.

      At least in the US, if a cop asks if it's all right to look in your car or search your person, and they don't have good probable cause, politely SAY NO. Never resist but do not consent.

  4. how to define "digital currency" by sittingnut · · Score: 1

    only a small portion of most currencies are in physical cash. vast portion of most currencies are balances in banks and other financial institutions. these days those are maintained digitally.
    even in old days most accounts and currency transactions (in terms of amounts of currency involved, not actual number of transactions)were entries in account books carried out through other instruments than physical cash. these days even most of small transactions are entirely digital.

    so "digital currencies would no longer be subject to Goods and Services Tax" needs some definition and explanation beyond political press release level.

       

    1. Re:how to define "digital currency" by Impy+the+Impiuos+Imp · · Score: 1

      They taxed the currency exchange as a goods transaction, on top of taxing the actual item being sold (for bitcoins).

      So it was a double taxation. Bitcoin kind of weasled its way into countries by being, at its heart, just another thing being traded (and stuff for stuff remains legal, just as stuff for real cash is).

      Then dev communities said the double taxation was a scam, we are leaving, and government rightfully panicked as competition works.

      --
      (-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
    2. Re:how to define "digital currency" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Well the definition would be - distributed crypto currencies. The big change that bitcoin presents to governments is that currency is no longer controlled by centralised institutions - reserve banks and ordinary banks. I guess you probably knew that, but for anyone else that's interested.

  5. Less money for cronies! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Nope, can't allow that. Cronies must always be enriched. This bill will either never be introduced, or if introduced, will quickly die.

  6. Me too! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    That's why I don't use rare earth metals either.

  7. When I think innovation... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    ...I think a seven year old software platform with miniscule use, subject to huge boom and bust cycles and rent apart by internecine struggles.

  8. Waltzing bitcoin jumps into a billabong. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    > The Australian government has announced that Bitcoin and other digital currencies would no longer be subject to Goods and Services Tax.

    It is only fitting. Australia was populated by a criminal enterprise (the british government) sending masses of criminal people down-under. The whole country has an ethos of proud criminality, most even want the Waltzing Matilda as national anthem. Bitcoin is a for-crime tool created by underground criminals, it is suitable for fraud, ransom and theft. What belongs together becomes conjoined over time.

    Instead of various cyber-coins I recommend personally owning metals: silver for small payments, gold for larger ones, tin for canned food and lead for casting bullets. That way you can live on while others jump when bitcoin evaporates overnight.

  9. Scott Morrison believes in fairies by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The Australian LNP are like a bunch of starry eyed toddlers who have convinced themselves they're real world big business managers who understand people, economics, and politics.

    This is just like Mal Turnbull's "call for innovation" which they'll put no effort into but expect to be able to reap the rewards of, because silicon valley has venture capitalists and they use business words and that'll make the business grow.

    So when i hear the treasurer talkin' bout buying into international pyramid schemes i find myself completely unsurprised.

  10. Police State by harryjohnston · · Score: 1

    If Australia wants more foreign investment, they might want to stop the practice of arbitrarily imprisoning foreigners without any show of cause.