Wyoming Introduces New Bill To Exempt Crypto From Property Taxation

A new tax bill has been hosted in the Wyoming state senate on Feb. 16 that would immune virtual currencies from state property taxation, and suggests an effective date be provided for the tax exemption implementation.

Wyoming Senate Bill 111 was introduced by senators Ogden Driskill, Tara Nethercott, and Chris Rothfuss, along with representatives Tyler Lindholm, David Miller, and Jared Olsen. All are Republicans with the exclusion of Senator Rothfuss.

The bill received 26 “ayes,” from a mixture of Republicans and Democrats, 3 “nays,” all from Republicans, and 1 “excused.”

This Republican and Democratic backed bill comes as a growing bipartisan movement of US lawmakers are calling for more crypto regulation.

The bill is short and to the point, recommending a list of “imperceptible items” that should qualify for property tax exemption, like fiat currency, gold, cashier’s checks, and “virtual currencies.” Virtual currencies are defined as anything that digitally represents value as a medium of exchange or unit of value, and as well as not being recognized as legal US currency.

Taxation requests for cryptocurrency profits in the US are a relatively grey area, with US citizens’ crypto assets being subject to federal property and payroll taxes. On the other hand, the personal finance service Credit Karma reported that only 0.04 percent of customers reported their crypto assets to the US Internal Revenue Service (IRS) in 2017 as of Feb. 13.