Ohio Residents Can Pay Taxes in Crypto

Ohio is now the first state in the United States to accept cryptocurrencies as tax payments. At this point, this option is currently only available to businesses, but will be extended to individual tax payers in the future.

From this week onwards, businesses in Ohio will be able to register themselves to pay all their taxes in Bitcoin. According to reports, these tax payments will be made via the crypto payments service, BitPay.

Making Ohio More Tech Friendly

This initiative to allow tax payments to be made in cryptocurrencies is the brainchild of Ohio State Treasurer Josh Mandel. Mandel said that he saw cryptocurrency as a legitimate form of currency and that this program was meant to be a signal of Ohio’s ambitions to be seen as a technology friendly state.

Mandel, in an interview with the Wall Street Journal, said that he was confident that this cryptocurrency initiative would carry on even after his term in office was over in January next year. The State Treasurer also told the publication that as an elected state official, Mandel could take the decision to accept cryptocurrency as a tax payment without needed approvals from either the legislature or the governor.

This is not the only initiative the state has taken to make itself more attractive to tech investors. Columbus, Ohio, is already seeing the creation of a technology hub, and Cleveland is focusing on remaking its image as “Blockland”, a crypto and Blockchain hub.

The Broader Attitude to Cryptos

Ohio’s pro-crypto attitude is at odds with most other states’ in the US. While Ohio is not the only state to have proposed a bill to allow tax payments to be made in cryptocurrencies, it is the only state to have officially launched the initiative. With other states, local lawmakers have delayed that passing of this bill.

Prior to Ohio, in May, Arizona’s House of Representatives passed a bill that allowed the state’s citizens to pay taxes using cryptocurrencies. However, since the voting session, the initiative has been kept in limbo with multiple amendments.

Even before that, in February, Georgia had introduced a bill that would allow people to pay their taxes as well as licenses in cryptocurrencies. However, just like Arizona, that bill is in limbo. The bill’s status currently reads “25% progression” and that it “died in committee”.

Despite the fact that Ohio has now made the law official for businesses, it remains to be seen how many will actually pay their taxes in Bitcoin, especially considering the fact that the crypto market is currently in a freefall.