Cryptocurrency: Will It Reduce or Increase Taxes?

by Iggy Jessi

The idea of cryptocurrency taxes might make you cringe, but it’s not as bad as you think. Unless you plan on hiding your cryptocurrency gains from the government and hoping they don’t find out, you will need to report them as additional income on your taxes.

Moreover, because many crypto transactions take place in a sort of “gray area,” reporting them correctly is essential if you want to avoid an audit and possible fines.

Deciding whether Taxes Are Due for Your Crypto Transactions

The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) sees cryptocurrency as property, not currency. This means that if you receive payment in the form of cryptocurrency, it’s taxed. However, if you pay for goods and services with cryptocurrency, there is no tax consequence.

For example, if you use bitcoin to buy stocks, the taxes are only due when you sell those stocks. It’s also important to note that the IRS has a 90-day statute of limitations. This means that taxpayers have 90 days from the date they file their taxes to amend their report if they discover they made an error.

If you realize you made a mistake, you can correct it by filing an amended return. This will extend the time frame for your tax return, but it’s better than being hit with an audit.

Determining the Cost Basis of Your Crypto

The cost basis of an investment is the price you paid for it. It includes any fees or commissions you incurred. When you sell an asset, the capital gain (or loss) is calculated by subtracting the cost basis from the net proceeds.

While many crypto exchanges do report the cost basis of assets, not all of them do. In fact, many only report the amount of proceeds earned once you sell something. If you’re keeping track of your crypto holdings yourself, you’ll need to manually add the cost basis to your investment totals.

Tax Rates for Cryptocurrency Investments

The tax rates you’ll pay on your crypto investments will vary depending on how long you hold the assets. If you purchased the cryptocurrency and sold it less than a year later, you’ll be taxed as a short-term capital gain. Short-term gains are taxed as ordinary income and are taxed at your current marginal tax rate. If you held the cryptocurrency for more than a year, you’ll be taxed as a long-term capital gain. Long-term investments are taxed at a lower rate than short-term.

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How to Select the Right Candidate In Politics?

by Iggy Jessi

Politics is a game played by different rules and dynamics. It is not as simple as hiring someone and giving them a desk or cubicle to sit in, but there are many other things you need to keep in mind while hiring. Politics is all about bringing change, so you want people who can align with your vision. They should be willing to take up the role of an elected representative and campaign for their seat.

Research and Assessment

As the first step, you need to do some research on the candidate and their work in the past. You need to look at their achievements, vision, education, and past work.

You can also conduct an assessment of their personality. This will help you get an idea of what kind of person they are, how they are likely to respond in certain situations, and if they are the right fit for your team.

Check the Platform and Vision

Next on the list, you need to check the candidate’s platform and vision. A politician should have a clear vision for their country. They should have a platform on which they will run their campaign. This will help you get an idea of how they will steer their country if they come to power.

Watch Out for Red Flags

While you’re evaluating the candidate, keep an eye out for red flags. The person may be a great candidate in a lot of ways, but if they have something in their past that could be a problem, you need to know about it before you hire them.

Look at Their Behavior

This is based on the assumption that a person’s past behavior is the best indicator of their future behavior. This does not always happen with politicians, but it’s a good starting point. You need to look at their past behavior, evaluate the decisions they made, and the consequences of those decisions.

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Leading the Crypto Regulation is Switzerland

by Sissy Hall

Cryptocurrency

 

The entire cryptocurrency market has lost two-thirds of its value within a short time. In addition, there are various breakdowns at crypto service providers such as crypto wallets like metamask and coinbase (check out the metamask vs coinbase wallet for opensea comparison here). What does that mean?

The current crisis in the crypto market even has something good, says Urban Angehrn, head of the Swiss financial market supervisory authority Finma. “This crisis, if it really is one, is a salutary moment for this industry to let go of the hot air.” In his opinion, however, this is by no means the end of the crypto industry.

“It could very well be a sign of a coming consolidation.” Financial stability is not at risk and no impact on regulation or supervision is expected at the moment, he says. Finma focuses on criminal crypto activities in general, in particular money laundering.

Angehrn speaks of a double-edged sword: “A transfer of cryptocurrencies takes place very quickly, anonymously, and internationally. These are bad conditions for the prevention of money laundering.” On the other hand, it is an advantage that all transactions are traceable on an open blockchain. This makes tracking easier.

High number of unreported cases

Because money is laundered across borders, it is difficult to quantify how much Switzerland is actually affected. Globally, however, less than one percent of all crypto transactions in 2021 were criminal in nature, less than ever before, as reported by the company Chain Analysis, which investigates money laundering and crime in the digital space.

And although proportionately little, it is still 14 billion dollars in illegal money that is still moved annually worldwide via cryptocurrencies. The number of unreported cases is likely to be even higher. The authorities and financial intermediaries could do more. Like the criminals themselves, they could make greater use of technological possibilities.

However, the tracing of information stored forever is complicated, explains Angehrn. “Carrying out money laundering is usually not a transfer, but a whole scheme of several connected transactions with several people through several financial intermediaries. You have to study this complex scheme with a lot of time and patience to see the pattern.”

This is a kind of forensic work, according to Angehrn. Artificial intelligence could help to do this detailed work in the future. In addition, internationally uniform regulation and monitoring is also being discussed. At the end of June, EU countries agreed on a law to make crypto transfers traceable.

 

ALSO READ: How to Tax Cryptocurrencies the Right Way

 

Switzerland’s pioneering role

In the future, crypto platforms will have to determine information about senders and recipients when processing transactions. It is quite groundbreaking that the EU wants to regulate uniformly and establishes international standards in this area.

In Switzerland, this type of regulation has existed since 2019. At the time, Finma introduced that crypto transactions must be traceable. Drug cartels and other money launderers are likely to have a harder time throughout Europe in the future.

If they want to exchange Bitcoin or Ether for cash, they tend to become identifiable thanks to the new regulation. In the future, criminal organizations will probably increasingly switch back to the traditional suitcase full of cash in order to remain truly anonymous.

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