This week, Costa Rican legislator Johanna Obando submitted a bill to his country's Congress; To regulate the cryptocurrency market in the Central American country.
Obando's Bill aims to make Costa Rica Bitcoin-friendly; With taxes drastically reduced on cryptocurrencies, Cowen Telegraph reported.
Obando explained that the Crypto Asset Market Act (MECA) “will provide protection for individual virtual private property; and to self-guard crypto assets and decentralization” without interference from the Central Bank of Costa Rica – but in “complete harmony” with it.
The idea is to have a law recognizing digital assets and allowing those who want to buy, sell, spend and store their cryptocurrency to do so – without interference from the Costa Rican government.
Obando introduced the bill with Congressmen Luis Diego Vargas and Jorge Dingo; The government will not be allowed to tax cryptocurrencies when they are used to purchase goods.
Nor will it allow government tax cryptocurrency to settle in cold storage - and cryptocurrencies produced by the mining industry will not be subject to dividend tax either. However, profits from cryptocurrency trading will be subject to income taxes under the invoice.
In short, legislators want the Costa Rican government to learn about cryptocurrencies and allow people to hold and spend them largely freely.
This will eventually attract foreign investors and fintech companies, and create jobs in Costa Rica, Obando said in a tweet on the social networking site, Twitter.
But Obando made it very clear that the law would be different from the bitcoin law in El Salvador. In the latter, Bitcoin is a legal tender; Which means that companies must accept it if they have the technology to do so.
El Salvador became the first country in the world to adopt bitcoin as a legal currency. But the country's president, Neb Böckel, has come under fire for the law (and for his personal investments in cryptocurrencies, which he allegedly buys in the bathroom).
In Paraguay, the Latin American country is working on clear regulations for the bitcoin mining industry. In October, Chile's Senate approved a fintech bill that hopes to regulate the cryptocurrency industry.
