Australian tax watchdog reiterates tax rules around crypto

The Australian Tax Office (ATO) is unsure it can track the crypto industry using investors and taxpayers’ own records, the regulator said in a statement.

During the ATAX Conference on Tax Administration, held earlier this week, ATO commissioner Chris Jordan said that new crypto investors are not fully aware of the tax regime for crypto and that there were inherent challenges that made it difficult to fully understand how to submit certain digital assets to the crypto office.

“In a sector that is growing rapidly with new investors, we can’t rely on taxpayers knowing they need to keep records of their investment income and capital gains and disclose it on their tax returns”, he said.

Jordan believes that a common misconception is that crypto assets are taxable only when they are cashed back into Australian dollars, but this seems not to be true, and most people need a “nudge” from the tax office to remember and pay tax.

He said that the agency was working on advanced methods to collect, manage and share data so that taxpayers are aware of what they need to do to pay their due to the tax office.

Jordan similarly urged AUSTRAC, the Australian Transaction Reports and Analysis Centre, to help establish a better regulatory framework that the tax office can use to control and educate consumers.

Australian regulators have been fairly wary of crypto. Many have urged consumers to be careful with the type of assets they buy as crypto is by default a high-risk asset that is not clearly regulated.

While cryptocurrencies have been described as “fads” by the country’s central bank, this has not cooled investors’ appetite for them.

Even the country’s local stock exchange has been somewhat hesitant to introduce crypto companies while Australians themselves are considering gifting crypto presents this Christmas.

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Written by Barney

Co-founder

Barney is co-founder of CryptoGamblingNews.com. When not at work he can usually be found behind a Nikon. He's won numerous international competitions for his photography and volunteers as a content creator for aid organisations in Africa.

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