Arizona Might Take Tax Payments In Crypto

Two years after legislators in New Hampshire decided that they would not allow their citizens pay their taxes with bitcoin, the Arizona state legislature is mulling a bill that would pave the way for people to pay their Arizona taxes with cryptocurrencies, Coindesk reported.

In January, Arizona lawmakers had submitted a bill that would allow taxpayers to use bitcoin – and other cryptocurrencies – to pay “tax and any interest and penalties” to the Arizona Department of Revenue. Once the state receives those payments, it would have 24 hours to convert the digital currency to U.S. dollars. Already, lawmakers on the state’s senate finance committee cleared the bill through a 4 to 3 vote.

Arizona State Rep. Jeff Weninger, one of the bill’s co-sponsors, said the bill is meant to make his state a friendly place for users of cryptocurrency technology. “It’s one of a litany of bills that we’re running that is sending a signal to everyone in the United States, and possibly throughout the world, that Arizona is going to be the place to be for blockchain and digital currency technology in the future,” Weninger told Fox News.

The news comes about two years after the New Hampshire House of Representatives considered a similar bill, In 2016, the state legislature there voted down its bitcoin tax bill by 264 to 74 according to a Forbes report. The bill called for the New Hampshire treasurer to “develop an implementation plan for the state to accept bitcoin as payment for taxes and fees.”

The bill was introduced in 2015 by New Hampshire State Representative Eric Schleien, who had been working to keep the public updated about the option to embrace bitcoin payments for taxes. He suggested that by using a company like BitPay to process the payments, it would not be an additional cost to the state. Using that company also took away the risk to the state, he had said.