Swiss Municipality of Chiasso Accepts Tax Payments in Bitcoin
By Eugenia KovaliovaUpdated
2 min readPhoto: Khairul Abdullah / Flickr
The Swiss municipality of Chiasso will accept tax payments in bitcoin starting from the beginning of 2018 in an attempt to make Switzerland a global hub for financial technologies and cryptocurrency start-ups and a world leader in bitcoin adoption.
According to the latest report, Chiasso is going to take bitcoin to settle up to 250 Swiss francs ($265) of tax bills starting from January 2018. Cryptocurrency and blockchain companies operating in the region have supported the decision of implementing the new scheme. The announcement makes Chiasso able to compete with Zug as the leading Swiss canton for cryptocurrency innovation.
As the banking sector had suffered greatly in the wake of the recent financial crises, Chiasso began to look for another source of tax revenues. As a solution, the authorities came across the fast expanding fintech and cryptocurrency sphere.
Mayor Bruno Arrigoni said in a statement:
“Chiasso is recognised internationally as an epicenter of a growing technological and economic growth for both the canton and in Switzerland.”
Chiasso represents itself as the major rival to Zug’s Crypto Valley for fintech and cryptocurrency start-ups. Approving this status, the canton’s authorities continue attracting cryptocurrency companies to the region. During the latest few months, Chiasso’s mayor has met with a great number of cryptocurrency entrepreneurs and, as a result, eight start-ups have established their headquarters and are now operating in the municipality.
According to the official press release:
“the Executive will evaluate the possibility of participating as a founding partner in the formation of a non-profit BHB foundation, which will involve some of the highest representatives of Chiasso’s Blockchain / Bitcoin technology.”
Zug, the established center of a Crypto Valley hub, has already attracted such promising global start-ups as Xapo, Breadwallet, Etherisc and Monetas. Last year, Zug was the first to accept payments up to 200 Swiss francs in bitcoin for counsel services. From the moment of its official announcement in July 1, 2016, more than 40 bitcoin payments have been done surpassing all the authorities’ expectations.
The examples of Zug and Chiasso cantons show that the authorities are ready to embrace new technologies and give many other Swiss cantons hope to better attract the progressive fintech and cryptocurrency global start-ups into their territories.
Swiss cantons eagerly advertise their credentials in new high-tech advances, including financial and blockchain technologies. As, for instance, we may see new digital identity systems enabling residents to use local government services with more efficiency and under established methods, which have recently been presented in Schaffhausen and Zug, and a new blockchain project for electronic processing and archiving of official documents, which has been adopted in Geneva earlier this month.
Eugenia can call herself a multy-interested person, as she is always in search of new proffessional fields to encompass. After graduating from Belarussian State University with Bachelor degree in both International Communication and Public Relations, she joined a travel startup Fresh Adventures, where she worked for 3 years creating unique itineraries through exotic countries, travelling around the world and developing the company as a partner. Currently, she works as a business analyst in the field of information technologies. She believes that IT is the future, that is why it is so important to keep up with the latest trends in this rapidly growing industry.
Singapore’s new financial legislation is aimed to increase crypto-related activities in the country. Notable crypto operators and exchanges support the move to obtain a Singaporean license.
A new Market Integrity Working Group, tasked with the responsibility of ensuring fairness and accountability in the crypto space, will be co-chaired by senior executives of both Ripple and Coinbase.
