At a local event, the city of Rio de Janeiro announced that Bitcoin (BTC) can be used by its citizens to pay their taxes in 2023. This makes it the first Brazilian city to offer such a solution.
Bitcoin can be used to pay taxes in Rio de Janeiro
Starting in 2023, residents of Rio de Janeiro will be able to use Bitcoin (BTC) to pay their taxes. Specifically, this concerns what the city calls the Urban and Territorial Property Tax (IPTU in Portuguese), which will be able to be paid in cryptocurrency.
The announcement was made on Friday at a local event on the topic of crypto-assets: the Carioca Cryptoactivity. With this announcement, Rio officially becomes the first Brazilian city to accept BTC.
Starting next year, the City Hall will therefore deploy a technical solution, in order to allow an automatic conversion of assets into the local currency for the citizens who choose this method. The mayor, Edouardo Paes, had some very encouraging words about our ecosystem:
“Our effort here is to make people understand that in the city of Rio we have official initiatives that recognize this market. From now on, those who invest in cryptocurrency and live [here] will be able to spend this asset […] paying the official tax of the city of Rio. And we will move forward quickly.”
A vision beyond taxes
The city’s desire to give cryptocurrencies a central place doesn’t just stop at taxation. Changpeng Zhao (CZ), the CEO of Binance, was actually visiting Rio on March 17. He announced the opening of an office in the city, commenting on Edouardo Paes’ measure:
“He has done his part [of the job]. We are working on ours.”
The municipal secretary, Pedro Paulo, for his part, announced that the conversion service, which will be adopted by the city, is destined to grow. He mentions, among other things, the payment of cabs.
Without giving more details, the promotion of arts and culture through non-fungible tokens (NTF) is also mentioned. A public consultation is planned in order to establish the lines of work concerning this dimension.
If the European Union is a bad pupil, we see since last year more and more cities and states around the world adopt clear positions in favor of cryptocurrencies.
Rio de Janeiro is just the latest example. With the arrival of Binance in the city, we can only see that this is typically the kind of political choice, which can attract important players in a rapidly developing ecosystem.
