December 17, 2017 8:06 AM
The South African government’s tax collection agency is taking steps to better understand the ways and means of cryptocurrency trading, apparently eying tax revenue from digital asset holders.
The South African Revenue Service (SARS) is seeking the input of certain unnamed technology firms to help it better track cryptocurrency trades, Moneyweb has reported.
Dr. Randall Carolissen, the SARS group executive for research, said that the body is currently “treating cryptocurrency in the same way as capital realisation – so in other words, it is like a Krugerrand. If you buy it at a particular point and you then sell it, you will be faced with a capital appreciation and then we will treat it as Capital Gains Tax.” Presently, however, the agency is only collecting taxes from self-reporting virtual currency holders, meaning that it is probably failing to capture a significant amount of tax revenue.
“As you can imagine,” explained Carolissen, “it is very difficult – the blockchain technology. Without revealing too much – we are talking to some of the top technology companies in the world that [are] doing similar work for Canada and the UK and we are hoping to get that technology.”
He also related that SARS was “part of the [Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development] working groups and that has certainly been incorporated into our policy environment. So we are on top of it.”
Adam Reese is a Los Angeles-based writer interested in technology, domestic and international politics, social issues, infrastructure and the arts. Adam is a full-time staff writer for ETHNews and holds value in Ether and BTC.
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