Reports said that Rio de Janeiro will officially start accepting Bitcoin (BTC) payments for taxes related to urban real estate within their city limits, otherwise known as Imposto sobre a propriedade predial e territorial urbana (IPTU).
It has been reported that the new pro-crypto tax laws will be implemented in 2023, which was announced by the Secretary of Economic Development, Innovation, and Simplification, Chicão Bulhões. Supporting this cause led by the Brazilian Mayor Eduardo Paes, Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao (CZ) announced to open a new office in the region.
However, the rollout of this initiative will place Rio de Janeiro as the first Brazilian city to make BTC payments mainstream.
According to the translated announcement:
“To enable the operation, the municipality will hire companies specialized in converting crypto assets into reais. In this way, the City Hall will receive 100% of the amount in the currency.”
The report said that Brazilian secretary Pedro Paulo further acknowledged that the city’s goal, with the acceptance of cryptocurrencies, is to develop a solid market of this new asset class in the city.
He said:
“We will stimulate the circulation of cryptocurrencies by integrating them into the payment of taxes, as in the case of IPTU and, in the future, this can be expanded to services such as taxi races, for example.”
Likewise, the city also plans to involve nonfungible tokens (NFT)-based governance policies across various markets including arts, culture, and tourism.
Thus, earlier this year on January 29, Meta, the world’s biggest social media platform, filed a trademark registration with the Brazilian authorities to design, develop and provision hardware and software for various BTC and crypto-related services.
Source: Cointelegraph