Ukraine Mandates Citizens to Declare Bitcoin (BTC) Holdings for Tax Purposes

In a bid to regulate its cryptocurrency space, Ukraine‘s National Agency for Prevention of Corruption (NAPC) has defined clear rules for declaring cryptocurrencies as intangible assets. As such, taxpayers in the country have been mandated to report their crypto holdings following these guidelines, according to a Forklog report on March 3, 2020.

NAPC Defines Rules to Guide Crypto Declaration

Per the report, Ukraine’s National Agency for Prevention of Corruption (NAPC) has outlined clear rules guiding the declaration of cryptocurrencies as a type of intangible asset in the country.

Reportedly, the NAPC’s new rule is in line with the recommendations of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF). The national anti-corruption agency holds that cryptocurrencies are a digital expression of value since bitcoin and altcoins can be transferred, traded in digital format, and used for payments or invested.

Importantly, the NAPC’s new rules oblige individuals to report cryptocurrencies held by them or their family members and the declaration must include the name of the virtual asset, the date as at when it was last purchased, the number of coins that were bought, and its price as on the last day of the reporting period.

What’s more, the value of these assets must be denominated in Ukraine’s fiat currency, Hryvnia (UAH) with the exchange rate calculated using the standard set by the National Bank of Ukraine, as at the last day of the reporting period.

A Long Time Coming

Although the new rule is just coming into effect, the country had since made it clear that residents must report cryptocurrencies owned by them as well as their family members and some politicians in the region are already abiding by the rules.

Reportedly, Dmitri Golubov, a Member of the Parliament of Ukraine declared at the end of 2016 that he owned 4,376 BTC valued at 125 million UAH (about $5 million), at the time of declaration.

Dmitry Palpatin Viktovovich, the Odessa City Council deputy became the richest declarant in Ukraine after reporting in April 2017 that he holds bitcoins worth over 3.5 billion UAH (about $134 million).

Actions of this nature show that Ukraine is taking a more serious stance to regulate the cryptocurrency space.

A draft bill defining how cryptocurrencies need to be taxed was submitted to the country’s parliament in November 2019.

In February 2020, Ukraine’s Ministry of Digital Transformation revealed that the country will not be regulating cryptocurrency mining.