The Argentine National Treasury has just issued its opinion on this type of financial assets and their treatment as taxed in the Tax on Personal Assets, which has caused conflicting criteria in the doctrine.
The OECD (Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development) published in 2020 a work entitled “Taxes on virtual currencies. An overview of tax treatments and emerging tax policy issues”. It arose as a result of the claim made by the leaders of the G20 and the finance ministers about the risks derived from crypto assets.
The report provides a reference framework for their taxability in Income, Value Added and Property taxes. The operations included also imply their creation, storage and transfer, as well as their change and evolution.
Regarding wealth taxes, Alfredo Collosa, consultant (IMF, IATTC, TIWB), mentions the countries that charge inheritance taxes, such as Belgium, Brazil, Bulgaria, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Iceland, Ireland, Korea, the Netherlands, Spain and the United Kingdom. Among those that have issued guidance covering the application of these taxes to virtual currencies are: the United Kingdom, Korea and Finland.
Cryptocurrencies are also included as assets within the definition of wealth taxes, in the few countries where such taxes exist. This is the case of Belgium, Luxembourg, Norway, Spain and Switzerland. Also in Australia, Germany and Japan they have advanced with the taxability of these assets as well as Chile in Latin America.
Argentina and Personal Assets
As a result of the publication of AFIP Opinion 2/2022, criticism has arisen in the doctrine in relation to the definition to which the Treasury arrives in relation to cryptocurrencies, which is reproduced in the summary as follows:
“Cryptocurrencies can be characterized as a new class of financial asset, non-traditional and based on Blockchain technology, which is ultimately about an electronic entry that incorporates the right to a certain amount of money, which can be typified as securities, since they participate in the main characteristics of the latter. They are homogeneous and fungible goods in the terms of article 232 of the Civil and Commercial Code; its issuance or grouping is carried out in series and they may be susceptible to widespread and impersonal trading in the financial markets. Cryptocurrencies make up an asset covered by the Personal Assets Tax Law.”
Taxable Assets
There is no doubt that crypto assets are subject to the tax in question, since they are financial assets that have payment and cancellation capacity, listed price, transaction value, which serve as a savings unit and have their own unit of measure.
Cryptocurrencies are assets subject to the Personal Property Tax, and must be valued at their listed value as of December 31 of each year. They do not fit as intangible assets of those exempted by law, since they do not have the aforementioned characteristics.
Country or Foreign Goods
Cryptocurrencies will be considered as taxable assets of the country, if they were generated in the same by companies incorporated in it, or because they are found in country platform accounts or because they are found as of December 31 in virtual wallets of the same. On the contrary, holdings of cryptocurrencies on Exchange platforms, or in foreign virtual wallets, will be considered foreign assets.
Beyond some doubts that marks the doctrine on the definition of cryptoactives that arise from the analyzed opinion, in short, it is an asset in permanent development and a highly complex analysis. The Treasury states their status as taxable, providing greater certainty on the subject.
By Audy Castaneda
