Bitcoins take 25 thousand to the IR fine mesh – 02/01/2024 – Market

The Federal Revenue identified 25,126 individuals who own bitcoins and did not declare the cryptoactive in their 2023 Income Tax Declaration.

Using traditional and artificial intelligence techniques, the tax agency identified that, at the end of 2022, these taxpayers had at least 0.05 bitcoin, the equivalent of around R$10,000 in current values. In total, they would have investments of approximately R$1.06 billion not reported to the Federal Revenue.

Among the investors identified by the IRS, 181 indicate that they are abroad and, depending on specific conditions, may be exempt from declaring in Brazil.

In a note, the IRS says that it “is evaluating taking action to encourage the self-regularization of data reported last year”, encouraging compliance, “without imposing fines that are due in the case of opening tax procedures”.

In this case, taxpayers would be informed about the need to adjust their 2023 IRPF declarations, by sending a rectifying declaration, so that inspection procedures are not opened and fines are not assessed.

According to the IRS, anyone who purchased R$5,000 or more in virtual currencies or owns (even if in the custody of a third party) a similar amount has the obligation to report this investment.

The person responsible for the declaration must have the income report sent by the exchange (broker responsible for the operation) domiciled in Brazil.

If the operation was carried out on its own or through an exchange abroad, the taxpayer will need to retrieve all data on operations carried out in the base year to report to the government.

The tax will be charged if the monthly sale of cryptoactives exceeds R$35,000, following the progressive table that goes from 15% to 22.5% on income. However, consultants consulted by Sheet recommend that the taxpayer declare income from all operations, even if they are exempt.

The IRS identified 237,369 investors in bitcoins, with an accumulated total of R$20.5 billion, when processing income tax returns submitted by individuals in 2023.

More than half of the declarants (50.9%) made an investment of up to R$1,000. The value of up to R$10 thousand was reported by 80.6% of individuals. According to the IRS, there are investors who declared they have more than R$1 million in bitcoins.

“In order to facilitate the correct completion of the income tax declaration, the Federal Revenue Service will make data on bitcoins and other cryptoactives available in the pre-filled declaration, as it did last year”, says the agency, in a statement.

In addition to the IR declaration, crypto assets also need to have their operations reported monthly by the buyer. This requirement applies to anyone who makes sales above R$30,000 per month through an exchange abroad or operates on their own.

The taxpayer must fill out a form and send it to the IRS in the month in which the limit of R$30,000 in sales is exceeded. In case of delay, the individual pays a fine of R$100 per month. Exchanges in Brazil are required to send customer data to the IRS.

Since January 1, 2024, declarations, whether original or corrective, of cryptoassets have a new layout. The filling of numeric fields that have decimal places has been changed. With a larger size, the fields now require a comma to be used as a separator between the whole part and the non-whole part.

According to the IRS, the change was necessary to facilitate both the reporting of information by taxpayers and its processing, due to the emergence of cryptoactives that have a very low individual value, whose transactions involve, in many cases, trillions of units.

Growth of stablecoins

Surveys by the Federal Revenue, carried out monthly since 2019, indicate significant growth in the use of stablecoins, cryptoassets that, unlike other competitors, usually maintain a parity with some real currency, with a basket of currencies or with other assets such as commodities.

In Brazil, tax data indicates that the most traded stablecoins are USDT (Tether) and USDC, both with parity with the US dollar, in addition to BRZ, which has parity linked to the real.