As per the rules introduced in Belgium in 2017, cryptocurrency investors have to pay a 33 percent tax on the crypto profits. Now, Belgian Tax Authority investigates foreign crypto exchanges in order to find Belgian taxpayers trading there.
5 March, AtoZForex - The Belgian Special Tax Inspectorate (STI) is searching for Belgian individuals that have invested in cryptocurrencies through foreign exchanges. According to the local media reports, the STI has received information about Belgian investors trading on Finnish cryptocurrency exchanges from the Finnish officials.
Belgian Tax Authority investigates Foreign Crypto Exchanges
Following this, the STI has started to look into the cases of three Belgian taxpayers, while one of the cases has been closed as “non-case”. As per the rules introduced in Belgium in 2017, cryptocurrency investors have to pay a 33 percent tax on the crypto profits. The profits should be filed under the “various income” section on the tax form.
Thanks to the anonymous nature of the cryptocurrency trading platforms, the Belgian cryptocurrency tax rule has been relatively hard to implement. Yet, the STI is looking into adopting the approach of the US Internal Revenue Service (IRS). The latter has legally obliged the US-based cryptocurrency exchange and wallet Coinbase to hand over the data on approximately 13,000 customers for the purpose of tax enforcement.
Belgian Tax Authority Plans to follow US IRS Practices
Belgian tax officials are reportedly planning to use the double taxation treaty between the US and Belgium in order to get information about potential Belgian Coinbase users. In addition, the STI also considers sending similar requests for information to some other cryptocurrency exchanges to find out whether any Belgian taxpayers are their customers. Francis Adyns, a representative Federal Public Service of Belgium, has been quoted as saying:
“It will be investigated whether a similar question can be asked as that of the IRS There are several other websites that deal in bitcoins and many other crypto coins. Every known website in this domain can count on our explicit attention.”
The IRS has asked Coinbase to provide detailed information on each of its 500,000 users back in July 2017. The IRS initially requested nine sets of user data. These included “complete user profiles, know-your-customer due diligence, documents regarding third-party access, transaction logs, records of payments processed, correspondence between Coinbase and Coinbase users, account or invoice statements and records of payments.”
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