By Marcela Ayres
BRASILIA (Reuters) – Brazil’s tax authorities will soon call foreign crypto exchanges not based in the country to explain their operations and how they work with local service providers, government officials told Reuters on Monday.
The tax authorities are expected to publish a regulation this week calling on these companies for further information. Unlike exchanges formally based in Brazil, they are not required to report transactions executed on their platforms.
“It is a concern for us to first understand how they operate here, whether there is any illegality or not. We are also concerned that information on Brazilian wealth is being levied here,” said Andrea Chaves, assistant secretary of inspection at the federal government. revenue service.
Wagner Lima, risk management coordinator at the tax authorities, said the government also wants to understand how these exchanges work with service providers in the country to ensure they provide information as required by the tax authorities under a 2019 regulation.
Among the exchanges that are not based in Brazil but operate in the country and even have Portuguese-language websites are Binance, Coinbase, OKX and KuCoin.
The call comes amid a surge in crypto assets in Latin America’s largest economy.
From January to July 2023, Brazilians declared 133.6 billion reais ($24.6 billion) in crypto assets, up 36.6% from the same period last year, according to the latest data from the tax authorities, which is working on a technological update to release new figures.
Of this total, 14.5 billion reais were declared through foreign exchanges, a growth of 51.2% on the same basis. In this case, providing information to the government depends on taxpayers, both private individuals and legal entities.
($1 = 5.4245 reais)
(Reporting by Marcela Ayres, editing by Louise Heavens)
