Colorado Governor Jared Schutz Polis said the US state will accept cryptocurrency payments from this summer.
In an interview Tuesday with CNBC, Colorado Governor Jared Polis announced that the U.S. state will begin accepting cryptocurrency for state taxes this summer.
“We expect this summer, fairly soon, to accept cryptocurrencies for all state tax related purposes,” Polis confirmed, adding that an intermediary will convert the payments. converted into US dollars.
Polis also said Colorado is considering allowing state residents to pay for additional services like driver's licenses with cryptocurrency.
The governor of Colorado has long been a crypto advocate. In 2014, he became the first politician in the US to accept Bitcoin donations for his campaign.
Colorado is not the first US state to consider paying state taxes with cryptocurrencies. In 2018, Ohio allowed companies to file state corporate taxes through a website specifically focused on cryptocurrency. However, the program ended in 2019 after only 10 companies used it to file their taxes.
Wyoming and Arizona are also looking to pass similar crypto tax bills. A proposed bill in Arizona is seeking to amend state law to include Bitcoin as legal currency for payment of “debts, public charges, taxes, and fees.” Another bill yet to be presented at the Wyoming legislature proposes accepting any cryptocurrency for a “sale and use tax” instead of an income tax.
Colorado's approach is different in that it will allow taxpayers to use cryptocurrencies for all state taxes.
Notably, the state proposals differ from the federal rules on crypto taxation. The Internal Revenue Service labels cryptocurrencies as property, which means that if a person decides to pay their state taxes in crypto, the conversion to dollars will be subject to capital gains tax.