Portugal Proposes New Taxes on Crypto Transactions

Portugal wants to begin taxing digital currency gains on purchases held for less than a year, according to a proposal in the country’s 2023 budget.

As Bloomberg reported Monday (Oct. 10), the proposal would tax gains on crypto holdings held for under a year at a rate of 28%, while continuing to exempt crypto assets held for more than 365 days.

“It’s a regime that fits into our tax system and also to what is being done in the rest of Europe,” Secretary of State for Tax Affairs António Mendonça Mendes told reporters at a news conference in Lisbon, per Bloomberg.

The report said the budget would also consider new cryptocurrencies and mining operations as taxable income. In addition, the government is also set to roll out a 10% tax on cryptocurrencies, as well as a 4% rate on the commissions charged by brokers on cryptocurrency operations.

Earlier this year, Portugal’s parliament turned down two new taxes on crypto, as the Assembly of the Republic began preparing its state budget for the year.

See also: Portugal’s Parliament Rejects Crypto Tax Proposal

The proposals came from two small left-wing parties. While the Socialist majority party had not yet made a proposal, PYMNTS noted at the time that the minister of finance had said a crypto tax was coming.

The news comes two weeks after reports that the U.S. Internal Revenue Service had “stepped up” its pursuit of taxpayers who haven’t reported and paid taxes on cryptocurrency transactions by getting a court order to access a bank’s data on customers of a digital currency broker.

Related: Report: IRS ‘Steps Up’ Work to Find Crypto Tax Evaders

The court ordered M.Y. Safra Bank to turn over data about sFOX, a digital broker that used the bank. As PYMNTS noted last month, it wasn’t the first time the IRS has made such a summons, but the broker named in court documents is smaller than those that have been the subject of a summons in the past.

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