How can crypto affect the future of taxes?
/For Tax Day, Adam Willems, Lead Reporter for The Financial Revolutionist, wrote about the future of taxes for WIRED. Looking at crypto’s efforts to tokenize city taxes, Adam argues that crypto is trying to turn taxes into another investment vehicle.
Why should we care?
While Congress and the White House mull the future of crypto and creep toward clarity—is it an investment vehicle, digital asset, currency, glitzy kind of Kohl’s Cash, or some combination?—city-level developments like CityCoins may beat federal lawmakers to the punch, reshaping municipal taxes in crypto’s image, and, in the process, forcing national policy to follow its lead. If boosters have their way, CityCoins’ launch, bolstered by the uncertainty of crypto taxes, will signify a sea change for taxes. For one, taxes may assume an entirely new form, following in the footsteps of crypto, which claimed to improve upon its fiat predecessor while becoming another investment vehicle. But unlike fiat or other forms of crypto wealth, which require lobbyists or other workaround measures in order to shape policy, CityCoins and its ilk aim to control a city’s spigot, making its political power immediate. The “we” of the city may change in the process, no longer defined by geographic borders or bodily location, but by token community and portfolio distribution.