Officials will be allowed not to disclose cryptocurrency income

While the State Duma officially officially recognized the cryptocurrency property, enterprising citizens and civil servants extract from this.

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The Ministry of Labor will allow officials not to declare income in cryptocurrency. To ordinary citizens, the possession of virtual money also gives some possibilities of bypassing laws - at least until the State Duma has adopted the law on their regulation.

• Cryptocurrencies first appeared in the new recommendations of the Ministry of Labor on how officials should declare property. The document says that the income certificate can not indicate "goods and services received in kind, as well as virtual currencies."

• The document also expands the list of “other income”, which civil servants are obliged to indicate in the declaration - these are also “funds received from relatives and third parties on a non -reflective basis” (with the exception of spouses and minor children). In addition, officials are recommended to indicate other places of their work.

• Cryptocurrencies in Russia have not yet been regulated in any way: the Ministry of Finance and the Central Bank submitted the corresponding bill only at the end of December. He defines cryptocurrencies and tokens as a “digital financial asset”, and from the point of view of the Civil Code, they will be considered as property. We analyzed the main provisions of the law in detail in our newsletter.

• Despite this, it is necessary to pay taxes from cryptocurrency income - the Ministry of Finance explained in the fall that they are taxed by personal income tax, and citizens should declare these income themselves.

• But in more complex cases, the lack of regulation gives the owners of cryptocurrencies the opportunity for manipulations. Now, for example, the Moscow Arbitration Court is considering the case of the personal bankruptcy of Igor Tsarkov. The bankrupt asks not to take into account the cryptocurrency belonging to him in the formation of the bankruptcy estate, referring to the fact that the crypto cannot be officially considered property. The financial manager appointed by the court, of course, is against: if the court sides Tsarkov, a precedent will be created that allows debtors to underestimate their assets with the help of cryptocurrencies, he said.
• However, the deputies also read about the case with Tsarkov - today the head of the State Duma Committee on the financial market Anatoly Aksakov said that the Lower Chamber is preparing amendments to the bankruptcy law, allowing to make cryptocurrency to the bankruptcy estate. In addition, Aksakov promised a separate law that prevents tax evasion by withdrawing assets in cryptocurrencies.

What am I to me?

Ordinary citizens will be able to use different loopholes, which are opened by a legal vacuum in the field of cryptocurrencies, not for long: the law can be adopted in March 2018. Whether the privilege law that the Ministry of Labor gives to officials will cancel is not clear.

Artem Gubenko, The Bell