Although cryptoassets, better known as cryptocurrencies, remain largely unregulated, including by the financial system authorities, raising doubts and evoking different understandings as for their legal nature, the Brazilian Federal Revenue Service (RFB) does not feel intimidated by the subject, proceeding with the regulation for tax purposes.
Today, RFB Normative Instruction No. 1,888, of 05/03/2019, was enacted, which provides for the obligation to report to the Federal Revenue Service information about digital asset operations in the amount equal to or greater than R$ 30,000.00, either alone or in the whole of the operations. The measure will apply to operations performed from August 1, 2019. We highlight the main rules of this new ancillary obligation below:
What cryptoassets are, exactly: according to the Normative Instruction, cryptoassets are the digital representations of value that are denominated in their own unit of account, whose price can be expressed in local or foreign sovereign currency, electronically transacted through encryption and distributed ledger technologies, which can be used as a way of investment, instrument for transferring values or access to services and which do not constitute legal tender.
Who is obliged to provide such information:
CRYPTOCURRENCY EXCHANGE PLATFORMS DOMICILED FOR TAX PURPOSES IN BRAZIL, which is deemed the legal entity, although not a financial one, which renders cryptocurrency operation services, including intermediation, negotiation or custody, and which can accept any means of payment, including other cryptoassets, or which provides an environment for sales operations among the users themselves; and
INDIVIDUAL OR LEGAL ENTITY RESIDING OR DOMICILED IN BRAZIL that performs operations through exchange platform domiciled abroad or without the intermediation of the exchange platform.
Which operations are subject to the obligation: sales, exchange, donation, transfer of cryptoassets to the exchange platform, withdrawal of cryptoassets from exchange platform, temporary assignment (lease), giving in payment, issue and any other operation that implies transfer of cryptoassets.
How the information is supposed to be provided: through system available in the Virtual Service Center (e-CAC) of the RFB, which is accessed through Digital Certificate.
Deadline for the provision of the information: on a monthly basis, until the last working day of the month subsequent to the completion of the operations and, therefore, the declaration relating to the month of beginning (August 2019) must be submitted until 09/30/2019 and so on.