CANBERRA, Feb. 2 (Xinhua) -- The Australian government is investigating how it could tax cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin, it has been revealed.
Michael Sukkar, Australia's Assistant Treasurer, on Friday confirmed he was working on the issue with Treasury and the Australian Taxation Office (ATO).
"I have been informally working with people in Treasury and the ATO about how we characterise and potentially tax and treat cryptocurrencies," Sukkar told News Corp Australia.
"Obviously there have been moves around a number of jurisdictions who have taken a relatively dim view of cryptocurrency."
Sukkar said that any work on taxing cryptocurrency was in its early stages.
"But I think, in a short term, the most important thing for us to do is to give some pretty good guidance, particularly through the ATO, on how we would treat these for tax purposes, for anyone who has potentially realised a gain in this financial year," he said.
"As I keep being told, the gains were apparently very big."
Under current regulations, cryptocurrency is treated as property by the ATO meaning owners must report any holdings to the ATO and pay capital gains tax.
It was revealed in January that the ATO was establishing a taskforce to monitor cryptocurrency transactions.
The taskforce will be made up of experts in banking, tax law, finance and technology and would work to ensure cryptocurrency investors aren't dodging tax responsibilities.
Executives of international banks have repeatedly called for any regulations on cryptocurrency to be global, saying that national regulations would not be able to be enforced on a virtual community.
