The global tax crack down on cryptocurrency has arrived on our shores, with thousands of traders now finding out they’re in debt with Inland Revenue (IRD).
Crypto investors were warned by IRD back in April of this year to get tax compliant, “so they don’t end up with an expensive surprise down the line”.
At the time, IRD noted it had “identified 355,000 unique crypto-asset users in New Zealand, undertaking around 57 million transactions, with a value of $36 billion”. IRD last week sent out the first wave of letters to those identified, demanding tax on cryptocurrency gains that no longer exist. One trader posted on a Reddit thread about the letters: “I feel scared and I have nowhere near the $70k that is probably due. What should I do?”.
The Crypto Asset Reporting Framework (CARF) took effect on 1 April, and requires exchanges to hand transaction data to IRD and share it across borders. The G20 mandated the framework in April 2021, and tasked the OECD with its design of the reporting standards that individual countries would later adopt. The OECD said that crypto’s rapid growth had created opportunities for people to “hide their income and wealth from tax authorities”.
Josh Hawkey of Taxhawk told Cryptocurrency NZ that, “if genuine hardship can be shown, financial relief may be available, though only once a person’s full financial position has been disclosed”. He has told clients, “You are not going to jail. IRD is not going to knock your door down. But we do need to deal with it properly”. Read more at Cryptocurrency.org, IRD.govt.nz and Gilligan Rowe & Associates.
Image credit: Traxer
This story has been republished with permission from RCR Bites. For news like this direct and free to your Inbox every day, go to biteme.news to sign up for RCR Bites
Pssst. Crypto ain’t anonymous (it’s a ledger which records every transaction – a bit like the CBDCs the fake democracy politicians are itching to introduce).
A trojan horse