Australia Addresses the Public About Legislation on Cryptocurrency

• Australia addressed the public to submit their responses about the government’s legislation on cryptocurrency.
• The government will be accepting responses till September 30.
• The responses could be lodged through email or post.

Australia’s Department of Treasury addressed the public to submit their responses about the government’s decision to exclude cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin from being treated as a foreign currency for Australian income tax purposes.

According to Australia’s government:

Exposure draft legislation, Treasury Laws Amendment (Measures for Consultation) Bill 2022: Taxation treatment of digital currency, and associated draft explanatory material, have been released for public consultation. Interested parties are invited to provide comments.

In addition, the government will be accepting responses till September 30, which could be lodged electronically or through the post. Even though the public could submit through post, the government requests the public to submit through email in a Word or RTF format.

The draft legislation focuses on amending the existing definition of digital currency in the GST Act (A New Tax System (Goods and Services Tax) Act 1999) before implementing it as an exclusion from the definition of foreign currency.

Furthermore, the Treasury of Australia promises submission will be made public by default. But, if the respondents wish to keep their submission confidential, they should provide this information marked as such in a separate attachment.

In June, The Treasury of Australia reported that cryptocurrencies will continue to be excluded from foreign currency tax arrangements under the Albanese Government. This decision by the government was caused after El Salvador allowed Bitcoin as a legal tender, which created uncertainty in crypto assets. The government also explained that the Capital gains tax will be applied to crypto assets that are held as investments.