Colorado Will Allow Residents to Pay Taxes with Crypto

Colorado has set forth a new law that will allow people to pay for taxes and fees with cryptocurrency.

Colorado Says “Yes” to Crypto Payments for Tax Fees

Governor Jared Polis announced the news late last week, commenting:

In Colorado, we’ve been laying the groundwork to be a center of crypto and blockchain innovation for a number of years. We see it as a critical part of Colorado’s overall innovation ecosystem.

The initiative pushes forward the primary goals of bitcoin and its altcoin cousins. All these assets – and many others like them – were initially designed to serve as payment tools for goods and services. Crypto was built to knock things like fiat, checks, and credit cards to the side, but unfortunately, this has been a rather slow journey given the volatility that has come with many of these assets.

The prices of cryptocurrencies tend to go up and down without notice. This has caused many stores, businesses, and organizations to say “no” to crypto payments, and to an extent, we can understand why. They fear losing profit.

Consider the following scenario: someone walks into a store and buys $50 worth of merchandise with bitcoin. For one reason or another, the store does not convert the BTC into fiat right away. About 24 hours go by, and during that time, the price of bitcoin drops, causing that $50 to turn into $40. While the customer gets to keep all they bought, the store has lost money in the end. Is this a fair scenario? Not everyone thinks so… Especially business owners.

But with Colorado and other regions now allowing crypto payments for items like taxes, it can be argued that the comfort level surrounding bitcoin and digital assets is getting larger. Polis says Colorado has been impressed with blockchain and crypto for some time. In fact, he commented that Colorado was one of the first regions in America to implement blockchain for infrastructure purposes.

It looks like the state’s goodwill towards crypto is rubbing off on its neighbors. Arizona and California, for example, have recently introduced bills that if passed, would allow crypto to be used as a statewide payment tool. This means you could use crypto not just to pay tax bills, but virtually anything granted you reside in one of those states.

States Are Becoming Like El Salvador

Both regions appear to be taking a page out of El Salvador’s book, which was the first country in the world to dub bitcoin legal tender last summer. Bitcoin can now be used in that nation along with fiat.

Governor Polis has allegedly been a longtime bitcoin fan. In 2014, he went so far as to accept bitcoin and crypto donations for his run for the U.S. Congress. He says he plans to have the state’s crypto program in place by early summer.

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