The bill on taxing transactions with digital assets will not affect cryptocurrency holders. ForkLog said GMT Legal managing partner Andrey Tugarin.
According to him, the document covers only the market for digital financial assets (DFA, security tokens) and utility tokens, and does not contain any mention of digital currencies (cryptocurrencies as such).
The lawyer noted that lawmakers laid out a taxation mechanism for DFAs by analogy with the securities market.
«Given the legal nature and economic meaning of DFAs (they are effectively securities on the blockchain), such an approach seems reasonable,» says Tugarin.
The analogy with securities-market taxation is reinforced, including the imposition of tax-agent duties on issuers and exchanges, and other organisations that pay taxpayers income from DFA-related transactions.
«This closely resembles imposing tax-agent duties on brokers in securities transactions on the stock market,» explained the lawyer.
The bill provides for the possibility of hedging risks through DFAs and a special tax regime for such operations. Andrey Tugarin believes that such an approach will positively affect market development when the first DFAs are issued.
Taxation of cryptocurrency transactions will be laid out separately. The expert believes that this document should have the highest priority. While the turnover of DFAs in Russia is currently zero, according to Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin, “the amount of funds in Russians’ crypto wallets exceeds tens of trillions of rubles.”
Earlier, ForkLog reported that the Ministry of Finance made changes to the terminology of the bill “On Digital Currency”.
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